The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Bad fates do not always follow those who deserve them.”- The Language of Thorns, Leigh Bardugo

Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns.

Travel to a world of dark bargains struck by moonlight, of haunted towns and hungry woods, of talking beasts and gingerbread golems, where a young mermaid's voice can summon deadly storms and where a river might do a lovestruck boy's bidding but only for a terrible price.

Inspired by myth, fairy tale, and folklore, #1 New York Times–bestselling author Leigh Bardugo has crafted a deliciously atmospheric collection of short stories filled with betrayals, revenge, sacrifice, and love.

Perfect for new readers and dedicated fans, these tales will transport you to lands both familiar and strange—to a fully realized world of dangerous magic that millions have visited through the novels of the Grishaverse.

This collection of six stories includes three brand-new tales, all of them lavishly illustrated with art that changes with each turn of the page, culminating in six stunning full-spread illustrations as rich in detail as the stories themselves.

Despite not liking fantasy all that much, I like Leigh Bardugo. But this was mostly a miss for me. I mean, I'm definitely going to be in the minority here because I'm sure most fans eat this kind of stuff up with a soup spoon, but this is probably a case of "it's not you it's me". Looking back, I don't even know why I preordered this let alone bought it in the first place. As I said in my Cinder review, I like fairy tales, but not so much that I want to read retellings or modern updates of the tales that have so much history behind them and are wonderful windows in the time they were created in, a time when you could scare the shit out of children with stories of wicked stepmothers and cannibalistic witches and at the end of the day, still have the good prevail. It says something about the things people dreamed of and the influences of things like romanticism or religious morality at the time of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. Perhaps that's one of my problems with this collection- the stories have no history behind them, thus I cannot really see a point in their existence. This probably has to do with the fact that I am no longer a child and do not read fairy tales for entertainment any more, I read them for the reasons above. Blame my history major on that. 

And yes, when I say modern versions of fairy tales, this is basically it. With the exception of a couple, the fairy tales in this book are basically the same old stories just told with a "grittier" feminist edge. It gets repetitive really quickly. The man is always a villain, the prince is evil, the female characters are kind and good, etc. That's a very common thing to do in fairy tale updating, by the way, and one that I've never been too keen on. In a lot of ways, I was reminded of the stories told in A Monster Calls, but without any of the substance that those stories had. In the end, I found most of them mediocre and rather boring. And kind of confused, with the references to sexual abuse and just plain old sex. Fairy tales are written for children, thus fairy tale like stories like this should be free of that stuff, because it just kind of takes you out of that nostalgic feeling. 

Of course, maybe this book was just doomed from the start, because spin-offy books like this have never really worked for me. Even the Unwind anthology UnBound was a bit of a disappoint! That being said, I probably would have liked it better if it was just stories or mythology or the history of the Grishaverse than just rehashings of the same old tales. Like if it followed famous saints or kings and queens or grisha. Something new and different as opposed to another Little Mermaid retelling.

The only two things that did anything for me were both the loveliness of the prose- Bardugo can really write- and the wonderful illustrations (also the fact that it is a genuinely pretty book). Even those two things though couldn't save this book. In the end, though it's purely personal preference and I love Leigh Bardugo's work and will still continue to support her by reading her books, but this was, again, a solid miss for me. Maybe I'm just too old for fairy tales. Oh well. At least my younger cousin, who loves both Six of Crows and the Grisha trilogy has a birthday tomorrow so my money hasn't entirely gone to waste.

5 out of 10