Book challenges are a great way to step out of your reading comfort zone and discover fabulous new books you’d never normally think of reading. And this was how I discovered Hemlock and Silver, a book recommended by a couple of colleagues and which I might never have got around to except that it happened to fit not just one reading challenge but two: our local library’s Turn Up the Heat winter reading challenge (discover a new genre), and the 52 Book Club 2026 reading challenge (read a standalone fantasy novel).
I think it was the strong narrative voice which appealed to me from page one. We meet Anja, a healer specialising in poisons, scruffily attired and with a chime adder for company, when the King arrives at her workshop asking for her help. He wants her to cure his daughter Snow, whose health has been in decline, with some kind of poison suspected. While Anja is thought of as a healer, she is at heart a scientist, observing, noting and experimenting, often with roosters, but also on herself.
Anja is the daughter of a well-to-do merchant, she’s a big woman, abrupt and sometimes tactless as her more marriageable sisters often remind her. But she has the respect of those who need her help. Her new task will take her away from her home of Four Saints, to a desert enclave where the Princess is sequestered, accompanied by two of the King’s guard, chatty and cheery Aaron and the strong but taciturn Javier.
I had just taken poison when the king arrived to inform me that he had murdered his wife.
The poison was a distillate of chime-adder venom, which burned my sinuses when I took it off my wrist the way some people take snuff. The king was a tired man of medium height, with sandy hair and deep grooves worn into the sides of his face. I hadn’t recognized him at first when he stepped through the door of the stillroom. Well, why would I? The king was someone that I had seen far off, at the head of a long table or perched on a throne. Without context, he was simply a well-dressed man who had come in without even knocking.
As everything she knows about poisons throws up no obvious solution, Anja is forced to watch and wait and hope for a solution. Spying the Princess eat an apple that has not been brought from the palace kitchen’s, Anja is mysteriously drawn into a strange world involving mirrors, a talking cat and a sense of evil. There is indeed dark magic afoot, but T Kingfisher maintains a light touch with her storytelling, with humour and a touch of romance never far away.
She also does a brilliant job of creating a believable magical world that relates well to the original story. As such it was the perfect fantasy read for me, as we have that ‘stranger in a strange land’ feel, with Anja’s observant and scientifically aware character. She’s aided not only by a snarky cat who is only sometimes helpful, but by the practical and determined Javier. It’s a clever reinvention of a fairytale favourite, complete with poisoned apples, but missing the dwarfs.
I particularly enjoyed the audiobook narration of Hemlock and Silver, which was read by Jennifer Pickens who does the voices so well, I would seek out other books she reads on that basis alone. Hemlock and Silver is a four-star read from me.
Judith McKinnon 