Review: The Language of Thorns
- tatedecaro
- Jul 18
- 2 min read
4/5 stars
Illustrated by Sara Kipin
I guess I'm really into dark and twisted retellings of fairytales these days. Case in point, The Girl in Red and Lost Boy, How to Be Eaten, the Chronicles of Alice series, Kaikeyi, The Crane Husband... I mean, I don't always like a retelling, but those are all ones I liked a lot. And here is another!
The Language of Thorns is a beautifully written, beautifully illustrated book of short stories, many of which have their roots in tales like Hansel & Gretel, The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, and The Nutcracker. In Bardugo's afterward she notes that the stories where characters must complete impossible tasks to win the love of another always rang false for her. Well, these stories shed light on what might be dissatisfying about the traditional happily-ever-after ending, expose the protagonists as greedy and conniving, and give the so-called villains their own hero arcs. You come to identify with the Sea Witch, sympathize with the nutcracker prince who is stuck in a dream world of a human's making, and understand the wicked step-mother's motivations.
The stories are the opposite of romantic, which I think is a big part of what I liked. There are no perfect princes who whisk away the ill-treated house girl. There are no beasts that turn into nobility with true love's kiss. No, in these stories the beasts are beasts (but they're probably better "people" than the nobility anyway) and the girls are plain but clever. The tales aren't sanitized, with the rounded edges of societal norms. They're sharp and a little unhinged, raw but real.
Each short story is set in a specific land of the Grishaverse, which is part of a collection of seven novels by Bardugo. I've read five of them. But honestly, they don't really have much to do with those novels, and you can definitely enjoy The Language of Thorns without knowing anything about the others,
Here are a few of the illustrations by Sara Kipin. What I really loved is how the first page of a story would start with just a small bit of the illustration, and it would grow larger with each page until finally revealing the whole.
UP NEXT: The Last Murder at the End of the World, by Stuart Turton
Comments