Reviews

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

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techgirl67's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective 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

osmxn's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad 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

4.0

The most dangerous and violent men are the ones who believe they have nothing to fear.

Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Characters:3.75/5
Plot:2.75/5
Prose:4/5
Storytelling:4/5
Overall:4/5 Stars.

Review:

By the cover alone, I was intrigued immediately but kept my expectation minimum. I was surprised to see Thistlefoot have such a great writing style. The prose alone deserves acclaim 💯.
Read this in a day just because of the prose alone. It fits the story perfectly.

I don't know the fairytale this is based on but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I know making plots out of folklore and fairytales isn't original and sometimes just sucks. But I think my lack of knowledge of the folklore this is based on benefited me in some way.

This was not just some folklore or a fairytale set in a quirky eccentric story but it is themed heavily on Generational trauma. It draws on the injustices of war, racial discrimination and genocide of races in WWII; Whether Indians, Asians or Africans, especially Jews.

“How do you ruin a people? Is it with fire? Is it with bullets? You can drag a man through the street tied to the back of a horse. You can incinerate a village. Can line families up in rows against a brick wall and fell them, one by one, like a forest. But all it takes is one survivor, and the story lives on. One survivor to carry the poems and the songs, the prayers, the sorrows. It isn’t just taking a life that destroys a people. It’s taking their history.”

The other thing this book excels at is the emotional impact it has with the said prose. The writing was lyrically morose and poignant.

Despite everything, Thistlefoot fails when it comes to character arcs. The characters weren't nuanced well and their development wasn't that great.

Isaac's was just humorous and his backstory was underwhelming. I felt the author didn't put much effort into it. The Isaac in the backstory and the present one felt the same and that should tell you something.

Bellantine on the other hand, was a character that was defined by a physical attribute without any other problems. And to me, that was a no-brainer characterization.

The House aka Thistlefoot was intriguing as a character despite its short POVs. I liked every one of its chapters. It had a unique voice as a personified object. It was funny and moody AF 😂.

I differ from regular houses in two primary ways:
1. I do not have a foundation. Instead of a foundation, I have two chicken legs, strong and restless as a slingshot.
2. I do not reside in a single static location. I loathe sitting still. If you try to make me sit still, I’ll kill you.

Also, that ending was not the ending we wanted but needed.

rochellehickey's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

4.0

anniesaur's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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? It's complicated

5.0

emilypolcyn's review

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2.0

I really almost quit this book but I think I had a complex because I bought a physical copy. If you liked Addie LaRue, you’ll probably like this book (and I mean that in a bad way.)

I WANTED to like this book so much… I love the concept and its core message is something that could’ve been so impactful. And hearing this story from the POV of the house sounded so interesting to me. Instead of a compelling, rich story about culture and family, I got an incoherent mess of unwarranted self-loathing, rambling internal monologues, underdeveloped (and unlikeable characters), and just annoyingly pretentious writing. (And that’s coming from me, who loves being pretentious and flowery.)

The middle was SUCHHH a slog and tossed me into a reading slump. The writing style is overly descriptive, indirect, and predictable while still being unclear. Why does everything have to be written in lists of three? The long, superfluous analogies. The arduous, hackneyed prose. The rambling internal monologues that don’t actually reveal any new information. like girl please stop writing in lists of three that all have their own discreet sentence— there was one page where this happened literally three times (and then again on the next page) and I had to put the book down to say “oh my god” out loud.

The historical scenes were definitely the strongest for me—they were handled with care and had a clear contribution to the story, with any inconsistencies being able to be explained by the folklore element. I really enjoyed the scene with Isaac in the village. If the whole novel had been that purposeful and well-crafted, this could have been a five star read. But alas ….

I Need To Talk About These Characters. Oh My God.

- Isaac is a cartoon character of a person. Why does he talk like he’s from the 1920s?? Why does he always have a cigarette behind his ear? Why did I have to see the same scene of him chameleoning so many times? Maybe I would’ve cared about how the only ever thing he ever thinks about is how shitty he was for letting Benji die if he hadn’t also been a weird caricature of a person.
-I didn’t ever and will never care about How Much Bellatine Hates Her Wretched Hands despite having barely any reason to. Does this girl have any personality besides hating herself? What happened to her friends from home? She has no chemistry or real relationship with anyone — why was her romance with Winnie so rushed and out of nowhere?
-Oh my God, Winnie. I was VERY uncomfortable with the initial implication that Bellatine is her mother (literally gave her life, Winnie is acting like a child only eating candy, Bellatine is brushing her hair and teaching her how to take care of herself…) and then they start having weird sexual tension out of literally nowhere (because she’s a CHILD, both physically 17 and also brand new to being alive, the excuse of “oh stone has been around for eons” does not matter to me.) The fact that the only queer relationship in this novel has 1) a steamy make out scene that felt SO tonally out of place and 2) implications of predatory behavior felt both oversexualizing and antagonizing of the sapphic community in a way that I hated, a lot.
-Shona, Sparrow, and Rummy have no personalities besides being stock characters. I feel like their only contribution was for the author to say “I have a woman that defies the stereotype of being weak, a man who defies the stereotype of being strong, AND a non-binary person who is also there. This is the peak of representation, aren’t I doing a good job?” But she forgot to give them any personality outside of those facts, so…
-The Longshadow Man was intimidating, until we saw him do the same thing four separate times… and then he just got boring. Why do I need to see this again? What is it teaching me?

This book could have (and should have) been 150 pages shorter with how much superfluous and repetitive information it had. Or maybe she could’ve used those 150 pages to develop her characters at all.