Reviews with content warning for Religious bigotry - Thistlefoot

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.

Content Warnings

morganpearcy's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This book grabs your attention right away with a completely different approach to the Baba Yaga myth and magical realism. I was totally taken from the second chapter. It does get slow in the middle, but it’s worth it to keep reading because the conclusion to the story is so good and horrific and sad. This book will wreck you.

It bears noting in the review that if you have birth trauma or child death trauma you shouldn’t read this book.

I absolutely adored the interweaving of Baba Yaga into recent history and the magical realism that allowed it to happen. I think some folx might be agitated that things like shapeshifting and a house on chicken legs and the ability to reanimate the dead don’t receive more visceral responses in the book from onlookers. But I felt that the author did a good job of setting the stage that these kinds of strange events and magical abilities exist in the world and are oddities approached with curiosity rather than so rare that it would cause like a crowd or a burning at the stake like. :) The author does a phenomenal job of exploring the horror of these magical abilities in great detail.

This book deals with a lot of terrible, hard topics. It explores through the re-imagining of the Baba Yaga myth: the holocaust, intergenerational trauma, how the body keeps score and how remembering keeps stories alive. I found the intergenerational trauma pieces to be so true - what we’re discovering now with epigentics is that trauma up to 4 generations past shows up in our bodies in all sorts of forms. This book even explores that. It also explores how true history really has to be kept because you can erase cultures and people and in turn perpetuate violence by erasing their stories. Very applicable to what’s going on today in the US with CRT and book censorship.

I REALLY loved the lesbian love story - it’s not overly erotic or sex and attraction focused, it’s believable and just fits the story. It’s also not the focus which I appreciated a great deal. I squealed at multiple points in delight at the little lesbian budding relationship which really just contributed to the character development as the two involved learned about themselves.

My favorite quotes, which I love so much I had to write down:

“There is no such thing as a ghost of the dead. Yet suffering has a way of begging to be remembered, sometimes as a story, sometimes as a wraith. Today they say the air in what used to be Gedenkrovka is heavier than it should be. So altered, it presses damp on the skin. They say pain can be passed in the blood. A sorrow great enough can alter an ancestral line - can make itself visible in the body even generations later - even once the name of the sorrow is forgotten. How long does it take for the body to realize it is safe? Does it ever? Can a restlessness be a ghost? Can a pair of hands? There are no ghosts of the dead. Your grandfather does not sit at the foot of your bed and sing. Do not be stupid. You do not see a child in a Victorian gown by the window. These are mirages or devils. The dybbuk possessing your husband is simply his anger mixed with drink. There are no ghosts of the dead. And yet, this is a ghost story. There are no ghosts of the dead. But events? Events, if they carry enough wailing can leave a mark. Can squeeze themselves into terrible shapes, grow arms, legs, a head on which to wear a hat, feet on which to follow you. Events — they have a way of coming back.” from chapter 27

“I will ask you these: What happens when the walls we raise outlive the dangers they were built to keep out? At what point does a fort become a cage?” from Chapter 49

Be prepared with tissues. Lots of tissues. At the end. This is easily in my top 3 Baba Yaga books so far. I am tempted to give it 4⭐️ simply because of all the damned fucking tissues I went through and was not anticipating. But it’s too good for that.

Content Warnings

booksdogsandcoffee's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious sad tense fast-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? It's complicated

5.0

From the first few paragraphs of Thistlefoot I knew it was going to be one of my favorite reads on 2022.

The best way to describe this book is a modern day folklore retelling of Baba Yaga’s descendants. It is about how stories are made and told. How stories can never die, how each generation keeps the stories and myths of old alive. It is a hauntingly beautiful story of two estranged siblings who find each other again, find themselves and confront their generational trauma.

Some of my favorite things about Thistlefoot are 1) the house, Thistlefoot, has its own pov. They are telling you about themself and the many stories and myths of their origin. 2) Isaac Yaga, one of the two Yaga siblings, is Jewish and he has migraines. I rarely see migraine representation in books, especially paired with Jewish representation and to see that part of myself represented brought tears to my eyes. 3) The writing of this book is literal magic. The way Nethercott describes the setting, characters, events that are happening is phenomenal.

The in-depth look at generational trauma, a love of theater and the importance of family is just perfect. On the whole I couldn’t love this book more and I highly highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

Tropes & themes
Found family
Traveling theater
Ancestral trauma

Rep
Jewish
Sapphic

Cw
Eugenics
Anti-Semitism
Death of a Child
Immigration
Death
Violence
Gore
Blood

Content Warnings

mfallon3491's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

4.25

Content Warnings

zoeelizabethk's review against another edition

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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.

Content Warnings

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