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A review by laindarko2
Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott
adventurous
slow-paced
2.0
I'll start with the one thing I liked about this book, which was the chapters that took place in the past, written from the point of view of the house and centering the story of Baba Yaga and her daughters. These parts were written in a wonderful folk tale style and had a lot of personality to them.
I really couldn't stand most of this book, though. While I often love flowery, descriptive prose, it just felt like Nethercott was trying way too hard here, and the endless strings of simile and metaphor felt forced, inorganic, and often cliche. (The author cites Angela Carter as an inspiration for her prose in this book's acknowledgements, but Carter's descriptions are immersive and visceral, while Nethercott's consistently took me out of the story). And that's how I would characterize nearly every aspect of this story: forced. The dialogue is downright cringeworthy and feels like it would be more at home in a CW show or some fanfiction. (Ex. On page 102: "And when we do meet again, I'd suggest you don't get in our way. Or I, personally, will make sure your sweet, lying little heart stops beating." Sorry, dialogue like that makes me wish I didn't know how to read).
The plot is jammed into place purely by having the characters make weird decisions with no actual motivation other than to draw out the story for longer - people keep secrets from each other for literally no reason, but then also reveal the secrets at random; relationships form without any actual chemistry; the entire concept of the siblings traveling the country with the Baba Yaga house to do a puppet show is extremely contrived and even after finishing the book, I'm not really sure what motivated the brother to come up with that idea. Information is also discovered in the most boring ways possible. For instance, the sister first learns about the book's antagonist when her friends randomly, in the middle of a conversation, get on their phones and go, "wow, this violent thing happened in Boston. That's crazy. Especially since an unrelated (as far as we know) violent thing happened in NYC last week. That's so crazy. Isn't that crazy?"
This book was 300 pages too long. The same things were described over and over again. And not a single chapter goes by without bashing you over the head with the themes, rather than just letting the story speak for itself. There were some portions of the book that I didn't find unbearable, but the parts that didn't actively irritate me were too mediocre to tip the scales toward the positive end. I really wanted to like this because I tend to love fairy tale inspired stories, but this was less Carter, Gaiman, or Valente and more ABC's Once Upon a Time (derogatory).
I really couldn't stand most of this book, though. While I often love flowery, descriptive prose, it just felt like Nethercott was trying way too hard here, and the endless strings of simile and metaphor felt forced, inorganic, and often cliche. (The author cites Angela Carter as an inspiration for her prose in this book's acknowledgements, but Carter's descriptions are immersive and visceral, while Nethercott's consistently took me out of the story). And that's how I would characterize nearly every aspect of this story: forced. The dialogue is downright cringeworthy and feels like it would be more at home in a CW show or some fanfiction. (Ex. On page 102: "And when we do meet again, I'd suggest you don't get in our way. Or I, personally, will make sure your sweet, lying little heart stops beating." Sorry, dialogue like that makes me wish I didn't know how to read).
The plot is jammed into place purely by having the characters make weird decisions with no actual motivation other than to draw out the story for longer - people keep secrets from each other for literally no reason, but then also reveal the secrets at random; relationships form without any actual chemistry; the entire concept of the siblings traveling the country with the Baba Yaga house to do a puppet show is extremely contrived and even after finishing the book, I'm not really sure what motivated the brother to come up with that idea. Information is also discovered in the most boring ways possible. For instance, the sister first learns about the book's antagonist when her friends randomly, in the middle of a conversation, get on their phones and go, "wow, this violent thing happened in Boston. That's crazy. Especially since an unrelated (as far as we know) violent thing happened in NYC last week. That's so crazy. Isn't that crazy?"
This book was 300 pages too long. The same things were described over and over again. And not a single chapter goes by without bashing you over the head with the themes, rather than just letting the story speak for itself. There were some portions of the book that I didn't find unbearable, but the parts that didn't actively irritate me were too mediocre to tip the scales toward the positive end. I really wanted to like this because I tend to love fairy tale inspired stories, but this was less Carter, Gaiman, or Valente and more ABC's Once Upon a Time (derogatory).