A healer dedicated to curing poisoned patients is swept into a royal mystery in Hemlock & Silver, an eerie and clever dark retelling of "Snow White" from fantasy and horror novelist T. Kingfisher (A Sorceress Comes to Call).
Anja has just finished dosing herself with snake poison when "the king arrive[s] to inform [her] that he had murdered his wife" for killing one of their young daughters. In truth, he has come to ask for Anja's help with his other daughter, 12-year-old Princess Snow, who is slowly dying of an unexplained illness. He suspects poison and wants an expert opinion. Anja, whose passion is developing cures for poisons, agrees to travel to his castle and investigate, though with some worry for herself should she fail in her mission. Any hopes that she might solve the case with expediency quickly fade; Snow's symptoms provide little clue as to who or what is poisoning her. Anja's unease is worsened by the princess's aloof manner and the oversized mirror in her assigned bedchamber, a treasure from the dead queen's dowry. Mirrors give her an "instinctive fear that if I look in one, I'll see something moving that shouldn't be." Catching onto one of Snow's secrets leads Anja to fall through a mirror into a strange gray world where she meets a talking cat with attitude. At first the disquieting reflected world seems empty, but she comes to realize it contains a force that could upend reality forever. Anja will need all her prowess at experimental design as well as the support of silent but steady royal guardsman Javier and the talking cat to save their kingdom and her own life.
Kingfisher smashes the well-known "Snow White" story and reworks it into a shadowy mosaic underpinned by its original themes of envy and usurpation. The magical world on the other side of the mirror feels like a construct from one of Kingfisher's horror novels, unsettling and sometimes grotesque, but it grafts into this twisted fairy tale seamlessly. Anja, a brilliant, full-figured woman prone to blurting her first thoughts, is a heroine in whom many readers will see glimmers of their own reflections. Her irreverent narration, bashful romance with Javier, and unabashed fascination with poisons provide a humorous counterpoint to the story's more frightening elements. Readers looking for a menacing, off-kilter fantasy that keeps some lightness will enjoy peering into this glass. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: A healer falls into a perilous mirror world while investigating a princess's possible poisoning in this eerie, clever retelling of Snow White.