T. Kingfisher BINGO and Hemlock and Silver Review!

Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher comes out this week, August 19th! As always with T. Kingfisher’s prolific work, Hemlock and Silver is both creepy and kind, thought-provoking and comforting. It’s a must-read for any of T. Kingfisher’s existing fans and a fabulous first T. Kingfisher book for those who have not yet read her.

To celebrate this book and the ways that it engages many beloved tropes also explored in her other books, my well-read friend Larisa and I have made you a present! Expanding on our previous T. Kingfisher celebrations, we have made you THREE BINGO CARDS (downloadable after the cut) to play whenever you read any book by T. Kingfisher, and to try to win with Hemlock and Silver!

In Hemlock and Silver, we meet Anja, a scientist who studies poison and its antidotes in her desert kingdom. She spends most of her time experimenting in her laboratory, but also heals kids who lick fly paper and addicts who overdose. A steady, useful life that nothing is likely to interrupt, right?

One day, Anja is called to the palace to help the king. She’s a grown-ass adult, and while she’s not very socially adept, she certainly understands that one does not say no to the king. So she goes, and tries to help figure out what is wrong with the king’s daughter, who has fallen mysteriously ill. Is she being poisoned? How? By whom? Anja and her new bodyguards head off to one of the king’s estates, where the princess will be staying for a while, to observe and hopefully diagnose and cure her.

There Anja meets a fabulous cast of varied characters, as she gradually starts to uncover the secret, magical origin of the princess’s waning health. Anja and her allies are a likable, competent bunch, doing their best to solve a mystery that turns increasingly spooky.

The kingdom’s backstory goes hard. First of all, the king who is so worried about his daughter’s unexplained illness is a single parent because he killed his wife when he saw her murdering their other child. Also, with broader implications for the worldbuilding, the gods of this land are dead … because they were terrible and needed to be murdered. There’s been some trauma, and everyone knows it.

Hemlock and Silver has been described as a retelling of the Snow White story, and indeed the princess’s name is Snow and there is a problematic apple! However, Larisa and I discussed how in fact Hemlock and Silver has shades of both Snow White and Alice through the Looking Glass, since there’s an unsettling mirror world in play as well.

Fans of T. Kingfisher eagerly await her next book and devour it on arrival, appreciating not only the innovative ways she comments on existing stories but also how many beloved features of her work show up again and again. It is in that spirit that Larisa and I have created these three bingo cards! Will there be a competent heroine? Will there be a disquieting animal made of bones or sticks? Will there be a portal? You know, probably! So here are three bingo cards to try your luck with different T. Kingfisher books, or to compete against pals as you all read Hemlock and Silver together!

Did YOU make bingo? Which card? Which book? Which line? I think the most fun part of this game will be discussing our interpretations, and we’d love to know how it worked out for you in the comments!