The blurb:
Healer Anja knows little of politics but much of poisons. When she is summoned to treat the mysterious illness afflicting the king’s daughter, she finds herself against the clock, desperate to track down the source of the poison killing Princess Snow. But the chance discovery of a strange alternate world inside a magic mirror leads Anja to darker discoveries, including what really happened to Snow’s dead sister, Rose, and why their mother seemingly went mad and cut out her heart.
Aided by a taciturn bodyguard, a narcissistic cat, and a late Renaissance understanding of the scientific method, Anja must navigate the mysteries of the mirror world before the dark queen that dwells within rises to threaten them all.
This is on the romantasy end of things, which is territory Ursula Vernon (T Kingfisher is her pen name for her adult books) knows and works very well. It's not connected to the White Rat world novels (the Paladin series, Clockwork Boys etc), but Anja is, in many ways, a familiar Kingfisher heroine: she's mature, though a bit socially awkward, doesn't fit terribly well into her society's cultural beauty standards and so on. Similarly, her partner in crime is a bit older, single etc. That's all okay; better than okay, as far as I'm concerned, I'm fine with escapism without perfectionism (and it's nice to see a little escapism that applies to someone who's a bit outside the lines and all that).
The things I look for most in a Kingfisher romantasy novel are all here: an inventive setting, likeable characters, a slow burn romance, memorable characters, a plot that hooks you in and humour. Hemlock and Silver has all of those things.
We've got two worlds in play in this one and both are pretty good. Anja's home world is desert, or at least it's dry enough that anyone from a semi-arid environment would recognise it. The saints of the world would be famiiar to that sort of environment too—Rabbit, Toad, Sheep, Bird and Anja's own Saint Adder would all be at home on a semi-arid saltbush plain (not a coincidence that Vernon has moved to New Mexico recently; and no, I'm not a stalker, I just follow her on Bluesky). The mirror world has its own rules, and its own creepy bits; Vernon has other novels that are more in the horror vein and some of that often leaks through into the romantasy books. It's done so here, there are definitely horror-ish moments.
I appreciate the characters—not just Anja, but the side characters too. Grayling the 'narcissistic cat' of the blurb is really very much a cat; the Princess Snow is very much a young adolescent who has been given too much to bear. Everyone feels very real and grounded, with reasons for acting the way they do. Nobody's carrying the idiot ball, there are no miscommunications between Anja and Javier that threaten to derail their romance purely because the plot demands an obstruction at this point in the story. As noted, Anja's very much of a class with some of Vernon's other romantasy heroines but, for me, that's almost a trademark at this stage rather than anything else.
The pacing is maybe a bit uneven—slow in the setup and exploration of the mirror world, sometimes distracted by a little "I researched this to hell and back and I'm going to share as much of what I learned as I can" but the enthusiasm is actually infectious. I'm not heading out to get a chime-adder or anything but it was all interesting.
Started: 19 October 2025
Finished: 23 October 2025
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