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danaslitlist's review against another edition
- 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
4.5
Graphic: Antisemitism, Hate crime, and Racism
Moderate: Death
zghutcheson01's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Graphic: Grief, Antisemitism, Death, and Hate crime
Moderate: Gore, Animal death, Genocide, Racism, Body horror, Xenophobia, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Child death, and Violence
elizafiedler's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Antisemitism, Violence, Racism, and Genocide
Moderate: Death, Murder, Hate crime, and Toxic relationship
silene's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Graphic: Murder, Racism, Antisemitism, and Child death
teafrog's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Animal death and Gore
Moderate: Antisemitism, Death, Racism, and War
Minor: Deportation
kcbatts's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Death and War
nichole_of_numenor's review against another edition
- 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
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.
Graphic: Body horror, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, Gore, Racism, Genocide, Child death, Death, Murder, Religious bigotry, Violence, and Antisemitism
starrysteph's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Animal death, Child death, Death, Antisemitism, Racism, Violence, Genocide, Gun violence, Xenophobia, Drug abuse, Self harm, Drug use, Adult/minor relationship, and Vomit
beforeviolets's review against another edition
- 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
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)
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