Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Hemlock & Silver by T Kingfisher Narrator: Jennifer Pickens
Published by MacMillan Audio on August 19, 2025
Genres: Horror, Fantasy Romance
Length: 11 hours, 50 minutes
Format: Audiobook
Source: NetGalley
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Healer Anja regularly drinks poison.
Not to die, but to save—seeking cures for those everyone else has given up on.
But a summons from the King interrupts her quiet, herb-obsessed life. His daughter, Snow, is dying, and he hopes Anja’s unorthodox methods can save her.
Aided by a taciturn guard, a narcissistic cat, and a passion for the scientific method, Anja rushes to treat Snow, but nothing seems to work. That is, until she finds a secret world, hidden inside a magic mirror. This dark realm may hold the key to what is making Snow sick.
Or it might be the thing that kills them all.
If there is one thing I can say about T. Kingfisher, it is her retellings of fairytales are imaginative. She may take some overall concepts from the tale of Snow White, but Kingfisher twists them, balls them up, dips them in color and throws it all against a wall until you get something entirely new.
Hemlock & Silver is an interesting tale of a merchant’s daughter passed her subjective prime at 35, with an interest in poisons and antidotes. She is called on by the King, while slightly inebriated from testing the potency of an antidote she has made, the to leave her research and experimentation and travel to a far-off castle in hopes she can save his daughter from potential poising. Kingfisher is fantastic at introducing us to a character in a way that will help you connect with them and root for them right away and she did that fantastically in this one interaction.
Anja the MC of the book is not what the time would consider beautiful. Not only is she a tall, full-figured woman. She is also educated and mostly interested in tinkering in her lab to try and develop antidotes to poisons. You can often find her deeply involved in her notes or rushing off trying to save addicts who have overdosed on some type of illegal smoke or milking her pet Adder. But when a King asks you for help, there really isn’t a choice to be made.
This was an interesting journey. Anja wants to help Snow, who definitely has something wrong with her, although it is very unclear if it is poison related or something else. As she wanders around the Castle, across the desert, a few interesting things happen that throw her understanding of the world into disarray. Caught up in the discovery of a lifetime, some mirrors can be portals if you know how to walk through them, Anja uses her scientific knowledge to catalog and analyze how the mirror world works. It isn’t until her guard mentions some security dangers from mirrors people could just walk through that Anja starts to see it as somewhere the poisoner of Snow could hide.
Kingfisher as always gives the reader something new in a story they know so well. This is only a bare hint of the Snow-White tale we know. I did have a few small pacing issues in the very start and then after Anja walks through the mirror the first times. However, those are small blips to the overall of the story and after we get over some small hurtles there is so much to like. Grayson the mirror cat that can talk was a fun character to play with. He has so many answers of the mirror world, but you know he is a cat so getting those answers doesn’t come easily. Javier is a former soldier and now Anja’s guard to protect her from the potential poisoner. The slow burn attraction between them is adorable and I enjoyed and looked forward to any interactions between them.
Overall, the worldbuilding was unique and full of wonder. The characters were smart and the ones we got to know very three dimensional. The villain was extremely villainous and as evil as we would expect an evil queen to be. The conclusion of the story definitely satisfying. While not my favorite T. Kingfisher retelling it is very strong and worth exploring.
Narration:
Performance: ★★★★
Character Separation: ★★★★
Diction: ★★★★★
Pacing/Flow: ★★★★★
Sound Effects: none
Jennifer Pickens was a solid selection for narration. She fits the voice for the age of the MC and did well with character separation. I usually knew who was talking but would have liked just a smidge more voice separation for clarity. Still the pacing of the narration when I listened to it at my usual 1.5x speed was good and the performance captured Anja’s competence and vulnerability really well. Grayson the talking cat was fantastic though an she captured the cattiness of him perfectly.
Listen to a clip: HERE
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I’m reading this soon, I always look forward to Kingfisher’s unique take on fairy tales😁
Me too. It is never what I think it is going to be. Always a really new way to look it them.
She certainly never seems to run out of ideas when it comes to retelling fairy tales.
Right! She is just amazing. I’d love to get a few more books in the World of the Rat though. Specifically a sequel to Swordheart that covers one of the other swords made.
Kingfisher is so good.
I love her sense of humor and writing. It really works for me.
Great review, Robin:). I’ve just finished reading this one and agree with you that Kingfisher’s way of taking a fairytale and flipping it about so it becomes something quite different and intriguing is impressive. I absolutely loved Anja!
It is always refreshing to have a MC out of her twenties. So much more depth there.
Beautiful cover. And this author is on my need to read list. Great review!
I’m always pretty happy with her books.