Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher – Review

Published: August 19, 2025

Publisher: Tor Books

Series: N/A

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 368 (Kindle)

My Rating: 4 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes Hemlock & Silver, a dark reimagining of “Snow White” steeped in poison, intrigue, and treason of the most magical kind.

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.

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T. Kingfisher has managed yet again to write a fairytale inspired story that somehow manages to stand out from the crowd of retellings in a genuinely fresh and new way. The bones of the Snow White story are there, minus the seven dwarves though as usual Snow isn’t the main character but rather a victim who must be saved. Hemlock & Silver is unique and mildly terrifying, just as I would expect from an author who so readily delves into both horror and fantasy genres.

Hemlock & Silver follows Anja, a healer who specializes in toxins though she wouldn’t call herself a healer of course. She’s a researcher at heart, and through her years of obsessive work in the field of poisons and antidotes she’s managed to save a few lives. Word of her expertise has gotten around to the king, who comes to her and begs her to travel to a remote holding called Witherleaf where his daughter Princess Snow is slowly succumbing to what he believes is a poison. What Anja finds is a waiflike girl who is clearly keeping a secret of some sort and when Anja sees her eating a strange silvery apple, she thinks she’s found the source of the poison. When Anja takes a bite of the apple and stumbles into a mirror she finds herself in a strange and horrifying mirror realm where it becomes clear that something more is going on than merely a single strange fruit can account for.

Hemlock & Silver is an extremely entertaining story with likable side characters and a mystery at its heart. T. Kingfisher has also elegantly blended horror elements into a fantasy story once again. The mirror realm was creepy as hell, especially once the denizens of that realm were introduced and I won’t look at a mirror the same way ever again! Definitely a unique take on the magical mirror – these can literally kill you. 

Overall, I will say this isn’t my new favorite of this author’s work, but it was a solid entry into her bibliography that I won’t hesitate to recommend to folks. I like Grayling the cat (who doesn’t like a talking cat?) and I liked the guard, Javier, who ends up tagging along on so many of Anja’s mirror misadventures. There is always an element of predictability to Kingfisher’s stories – an unusual animal companion, an older, unmarried female main character who stumbles across a love interest, a smidge of horror-like elements – but I like this. I know what I’m going to get and I know I’m going to at least like it and if I’m lucky, I’ll love it!