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nichole_of_numenor's review against another edition
dark
hopeful
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
I was really excited to read this book. I'm all about magical things and escapism. What can be more magical than a house walking on giant chicken feet? Plus the premise was so unique it had to be good. Connecting modern times with the Slavic folklore witch Baba Yaga was something I just couldn't pass up.
A brother and sister with a magical and troubled past inherit a house that travels on chicken legs. Bellatine and Isaac aren't close but this pulls them together for the first time in years. Soon after they revive the show they performed on the road as children, they discover a sinister creature is hunting them. (No spoilers here, just what's on the dust jacket).
I'll start with what I didn't like, since that happened first:
Unfortunately, this was a really hard book for me to get into. As the house was traversing all over America, it didn't really address how it walked everywhere without causing a huge media circus. It tried by regailing tales about magical houses in other major cities, but I just wasn't buying it. Tell me it was invisible to everyone unless it wanted to be seen. Tell me it traveled instictively in places where it knew it wouldn't be detected. Just tell me *something.* I can suspend almost any disbelief but it has to be addressed. Are you telling me that an enormous chicken footprint in a cemetary isn't going to get national media coverage? Right.
Bellatine has a special gift. For most of the book, she spends nearly all of her energy suppressing that gift, à la Elsa from Frozen (and becoming a huge stick-in-the-mud in the process, by the way.) I've been reading lots of books with that particular trope lately, so that irritated me. "Let it go." Be yourself. Love your abilities. I get it.
What I loved:
From the very beginning, I loved the beautiful sentences woven throughout the story. This author is primarily a poet and it shows. But they weren't overly complicated or too frequent; just enough to be a delight when they happened. That's what kept me reading. Here's an example: "Though it was well past noon, his people would be in bed still, sleeping off the sorrows they'd tried to drown the night before."
I also really enjoyed the multiple POV with which this story is told, including a very unique one.
As I hit the halfway point, I was convinced I was going to give this book 2 starts. So just powered through, trying to finish as fast as I could so I could get to something I would (definitely) like better. Then the tide turned and I ended up loving the last half of the book so much my 2 starts turned into 5. All of the magic is finally explained. Everything is tied together beautifully, linking the past and the present, tragedy and healing.
I'm glad I stuck it out.
There are definite trigger warnings in here: violence, anti-Semitism, pogroms, death, self-harm, murder, xenophobia.
A brother and sister with a magical and troubled past inherit a house that travels on chicken legs. Bellatine and Isaac aren't close but this pulls them together for the first time in years. Soon after they revive the show they performed on the road as children, they discover a sinister creature is hunting them. (No spoilers here, just what's on the dust jacket).
I'll start with what I didn't like, since that happened first:
Unfortunately, this was a really hard book for me to get into. As the house was traversing all over America, it didn't really address how it walked everywhere without causing a huge media circus. It tried by regailing tales about magical houses in other major cities, but I just wasn't buying it. Tell me it was invisible to everyone unless it wanted to be seen. Tell me it traveled instictively in places where it knew it wouldn't be detected. Just tell me *something.* I can suspend almost any disbelief but it has to be addressed. Are you telling me that an enormous chicken footprint in a cemetary isn't going to get national media coverage? Right.
Bellatine has a special gift. For most of the book, she spends nearly all of her energy suppressing that gift, à la Elsa from Frozen (and becoming a huge stick-in-the-mud in the process, by the way.) I've been reading lots of books with that particular trope lately, so that irritated me. "Let it go." Be yourself. Love your abilities. I get it.
What I loved:
From the very beginning, I loved the beautiful sentences woven throughout the story. This author is primarily a poet and it shows. But they weren't overly complicated or too frequent; just enough to be a delight when they happened. That's what kept me reading. Here's an example: "Though it was well past noon, his people would be in bed still, sleeping off the sorrows they'd tried to drown the night before."
I also really enjoyed the multiple POV with which this story is told, including a very unique one.
As I hit the halfway point, I was convinced I was going to give this book 2 starts. So just powered through, trying to finish as fast as I could so I could get to something I would (definitely) like better. Then the tide turned and I ended up loving the last half of the book so much my 2 starts turned into 5. All of the magic is finally explained. Everything is tied together beautifully, linking the past and the present, tragedy and healing.
I'm glad I stuck it out.
There are definite trigger warnings in here: violence, anti-Semitism, pogroms, death, self-harm, murder, xenophobia.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, Gore, Racism, Genocide, Child death, Death, Murder, Religious bigotry, Violence, and Antisemitism
beforeviolets's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Reading this book felt like a part of my own soul was carved out of my depths and projected on the page in front of me. I imagine the horror I feel is not unlike the way someone who has only ever seen themself through a reflection must feel when they see themself in a photograph for the first time. A knowing and unknowing.
Thistlefoot tells the story of the Yaga siblings, estranged for many years after growing up together in a family puppet theater. But they find themselves reunited by a phone call, informing them of an inheritance: a house on chicken legs called Thistlefoot, they turn their new home into a traveling puppet theatre, on a cross-country road trip to perform a show from their youth. But little do they know that their past is haunting them in more ways than one.
GennaRose has written a love letter to folklore and its ever-changing nature, to puppetry and the power of performance, to generational trauma and the importance of history retold, and to storytelling both as an art and as an act of resistance.
Despite its characters’ innate inability to do so, this book plants roots. Like a forest, there’s a whole system of wooden tendrils beneath its surface, burrowed between the pages, stretching back to the past and reaching towards the future. A whole life tangling beneath your (metaphorical) feet. Its themes, its characters, its plotlines interconnect in ways that only begin to break the surface. Each begotten fruit, each unfurled blossom the product of a history and a future unseen, a gift to the reader as we make our way through the complex, snarling terrain of this world and its many unfolding tales.
I unfortunately cannot begin to break down the many amazing element of this book or we'll be here for ages, so let me just quickly list some of my favorite things: a sentient house with its own POV that talks like a Jewish grandmother, an interwoven puppetry show, Baba Yaga as a protective and strong Jewish woman in a Russian shtetl, a new twist on the golem myth paired with conversations about control and life itself, maybe the weirdest sapphic relationship I've ever read, a nonbinary scientist, lavender cigarettes, a joke about Stanislavsky, the concept of ghost as memory (THE CONCEPT OF GHOST AS MEMORY!!), and a dissection of modern American folklore.
This book is for all those who have spent so long looking into the distance, they’ve forgotten where their path began. (And for Jewish puppeteers.) Kill the lantern. Raise the ghost.
CW/TW: antisemitism, genocide, eugenics, violence, gun violence, fire, death, child death, character death, grief, PTSD, murder, drugging, alcohol consumption, blood & gore, smoking, self-inflicted harm, migraines, racism, car accident, adult/minor relationship (kinda?), emesis, needles (brief), cannibalism (mention), decapitation (mention)
Thistlefoot tells the story of the Yaga siblings, estranged for many years after growing up together in a family puppet theater. But they find themselves reunited by a phone call, informing them of an inheritance: a house on chicken legs called Thistlefoot, they turn their new home into a traveling puppet theatre, on a cross-country road trip to perform a show from their youth. But little do they know that their past is haunting them in more ways than one.
GennaRose has written a love letter to folklore and its ever-changing nature, to puppetry and the power of performance, to generational trauma and the importance of history retold, and to storytelling both as an art and as an act of resistance.
Despite its characters’ innate inability to do so, this book plants roots. Like a forest, there’s a whole system of wooden tendrils beneath its surface, burrowed between the pages, stretching back to the past and reaching towards the future. A whole life tangling beneath your (metaphorical) feet. Its themes, its characters, its plotlines interconnect in ways that only begin to break the surface. Each begotten fruit, each unfurled blossom the product of a history and a future unseen, a gift to the reader as we make our way through the complex, snarling terrain of this world and its many unfolding tales.
I unfortunately cannot begin to break down the many amazing element of this book or we'll be here for ages, so let me just quickly list some of my favorite things: a sentient house with its own POV that talks like a Jewish grandmother, an interwoven puppetry show, Baba Yaga as a protective and strong Jewish woman in a Russian shtetl, a new twist on the golem myth paired with conversations about control and life itself, maybe the weirdest sapphic relationship I've ever read, a nonbinary scientist, lavender cigarettes, a joke about Stanislavsky, the concept of ghost as memory (THE CONCEPT OF GHOST AS MEMORY!!), and a dissection of modern American folklore.
This book is for all those who have spent so long looking into the distance, they’ve forgotten where their path began. (And for Jewish puppeteers.) Kill the lantern. Raise the ghost.
CW/TW: antisemitism, genocide, eugenics, violence, gun violence, fire, death, child death, character death, grief, PTSD, murder, drugging, alcohol consumption, blood & gore, smoking, self-inflicted harm, migraines, racism, car accident, adult/minor relationship (kinda?), emesis, needles (brief), cannibalism (mention), decapitation (mention)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism, Gun violence, Genocide, Child death, Murder, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Alcohol, and Violence
Moderate: Gore, Mental illness, Self harm, and Blood
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Racism, Car accident, Vomit, and Cannibalism
zoeelizabethk's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Thistlefoot was simultaneously what I want out Russian fairy-tale-inspired books, and also not what I expected. I think that this is a book that will hit really powerfully for some and be super annoying to others. I think that it's best to go in with as little context as possible and to suspend your disbelief. But also be prepared for a book that is worthwhile to read and well crafted, but also not entirely enjoyable. This is not a disney fairytale, this is a Grimms' original, cut off your foot to fit in the slipper, type of fairytale. It deals with hard things, but I think in the end it does its topics justice.
Most of this book is positives for me. I think the narrative structure of Thistlefoot is brilliant. I can't say too much because of spoilers, but the way different stories are broken up and told opposite and in front and in back of each other is well done. If you have any familiarity with slavic fairytales it will feel familiar but also clever. I also loved the prose and the narrative tone of the book. Nethercott is also a poet, and that definitely comes across in her writing. It's very suited to a liminal fairy tale. I really liked the discussion of the power of story, remembrance, and generational memory. I wrote my college thesis on Russian generational memory surrounding WWII, so it's a topic that I've spent a good amount of time with, and I thought that Thistlefoot was a really good vehicle to explore that topic.
The few negatives for me that I noticed, but didn't necessarily impact my enjoyment of the book. Occasionally the prose got a little unwieldy in my opinion and the book could have been shorter. I thought the minor romance that develops came out of nowhere and did nothing; I'm not sure that it even served as a plot device. I think there's good development for Isaac and Bellantine, but don't expect the side characters to be really well fleshed out. I thought they were sufficient for this story, but this might bother character driven readers. The settings felt often very vague despite seeming vivid to the characters. It was very hard to remind myself that this was taking place in modern day. Finally, I think the ending was probably the right choice thematically, but it was not necessarily satisfying, particularly for our characters.
Overall, I am really glad I read Thistlefoot. I'm looking forward to what Nethercott comes up with next, because I really appreciated what she created here. If you are a fan of slavic folklore/fairy tales, I think that this is definitely worth picking up. The blub likens it to Spinning Silver, and I don't disagree, but I think it is more similar to Deathless by Catherynne Valente. If you enjoyed Deathless, Spinning Silver, or the Winternight Trilogy (which I had serious problems with), give Thistlefoot a try!
Thanks to Netgalley and Anchor Books for an eARC in exchange for my honest review. I also listened to the audiobook narrated by January LaVoy, who overall had a terrific narration.
Most of this book is positives for me. I think the narrative structure of Thistlefoot is brilliant. I can't say too much because of spoilers, but the way different stories are broken up and told opposite and in front and in back of each other is well done. If you have any familiarity with slavic fairytales it will feel familiar but also clever. I also loved the prose and the narrative tone of the book. Nethercott is also a poet, and that definitely comes across in her writing. It's very suited to a liminal fairy tale. I really liked the discussion of the power of story, remembrance, and generational memory. I wrote my college thesis on Russian generational memory surrounding WWII, so it's a topic that I've spent a good amount of time with, and I thought that Thistlefoot was a really good vehicle to explore that topic.
The few negatives for me that I noticed, but didn't necessarily impact my enjoyment of the book. Occasionally the prose got a little unwieldy in my opinion and the book could have been shorter. I thought the minor romance that develops came out of nowhere and did nothing; I'm not sure that it even served as a plot device. I think there's good development for Isaac and Bellantine, but don't expect the side characters to be really well fleshed out. I thought they were sufficient for this story, but this might bother character driven readers. The settings felt often very vague despite seeming vivid to the characters. It was very hard to remind myself that this was taking place in modern day. Finally, I think the ending was probably the right choice thematically, but it was not necessarily satisfying, particularly for our characters.
Overall, I am really glad I read Thistlefoot. I'm looking forward to what Nethercott comes up with next, because I really appreciated what she created here. If you are a fan of slavic folklore/fairy tales, I think that this is definitely worth picking up. The blub likens it to Spinning Silver, and I don't disagree, but I think it is more similar to Deathless by Catherynne Valente. If you enjoyed Deathless, Spinning Silver, or the Winternight Trilogy (which I had serious problems with), give Thistlefoot a try!
Thanks to Netgalley and Anchor Books for an eARC in exchange for my honest review. I also listened to the audiobook narrated by January LaVoy, who overall had a terrific narration.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Antisemitism, Child death, Gore, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Death, Grief, Religious bigotry, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Homophobia, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Gore, and Blood
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Abandonment, Fire/Fire injury, and Sexual content
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