"The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic" by Leigh Bardugo

Bardugo, Leigh. (2017). The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic. New York, NY: Imprint. ISBN: 978-1-250-12252-0

                Ugh. Even the cover of this book is beautiful. It has a wonderful hand-stitched texture that reminds me of something that belongs in a museum behind glass.  Within this museum-quality book are 6 familiar stories, or at least 3 familiar ones. I had never heard of half of them, even in my Grimm page flipping youth. The stories are so beautifully written that it’s impossible to put the book down once you’ve started it.

                Among the three I recognized (eventually) were The Witch of Duva (Something like Hansel & Gretel), The Soldier Prince (The Nutcracker), and When Water Sang Fire (The Little Mermaid-ish). I loved the fact that it took me until the last page of the story to really make the connection to it. The details were just far enough removed from the inspiration that it took a while for everything to click into place.

                Some of these stories were more profound than I expected them to be. Children being treated as slaves, abused, murdered. I did enjoy the “wicked stepmother” archetype being turned on its head. The stepmother in “The Witch of Duva” was actually saving the life of the young daughter from her twisted father who promptly abused and ate his daughter when the stepmother left. Don’t worry, it was only a puppet of the girl, not the real one. The wicked witch saved her. SAVED HER. So wicked, right?

                This book, with it’s various stories about characters most people are familiar with, has a message that rings clear in each tale. Things are not always as they seem. The evil stepmother and witch can be your saviours if you just change your perspective. The wicked sea-witch might just have been betrayed and abandoned. The quiet, sweet girl might be quietly plotting murder.

                I really wish Bardugo would retell every childhood story I loved because I genuinely enjoyed every second of reading and was very disappointed when the last page was turned. Which reminds me of the very subtle illustrations on each page. They start with a minor detail and as the story goes on, more and more details are added until a mural reflecting the storyline wraps around each page. Beautiful. The Grimm brothers would have been proud (and busy reading).

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