Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > Thistlefoot

I debated my rating of this book for a little while: was it going to be 4 stars or five stars? I really wasn’t sure at first. Half of me said 4 stars because I’m not a patient person and it took me two days to read this book because I had to put it down about halfway through on the first day because I was kind of bored and needed a change of pace. The other half said, yeah, but then you picked it back up and the second half had the same lovely prose and compelling story as the first, but then it started to weave its way into your brain and heart and now it’s tugging on you from all directions, so how could you do anything but rate it five stars?

As you can see, I ended up rating it five stars.

Strangely, one of the reasons I connected with the back half of this book so much is because it brought up the subject of how trauma and other environmental factors can affect DNA. Geneticists have already proven that intergenerational poverty ends up having a lasting effect on those genetic markers, so why not trauma? If an event is huge enough to change something in our genetics, could that genetic change take hold enough to last through generations? It’s one of the most fascinating and terrifying thought experiments I can think of.

In her acknowledgements, Nethercott mentions Libba Bray’s Diviners series and Leigh Bardugo’s “Six of Crows” as influences on crafting her story, especially in her pacing. Well, I’ve never read the Diviners, but I’m a huge fan of “Six of Crows”, and I can definitely see the influence of Leigh Bardugo in the book, though not in the pacing. This book didn’t hook me and drag me along for the ride like “Six of Crows”, though I can see how matching pacing with the introduction of new characters or the changing of settings could be traced back to Bardugo and her Crows. Nethercott also credits Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and, honestly? I really think just about every writer in the urban fantasy genre should be thanking Buffy in their books. Heck! Every fantasy writer who has a strong female protagonist should probably thank Buffy. I don’t know where pop culture or media as a whole would be today if it were not for that show.

So, listen: if you’re looking for a quick read, this book won’t do you any favors. It’s not meant to be a quick read. I really think Nethercott means for you to sit down with this book and pay attention to it. Don’t take it lightly. It’s not some throwaway trend. This is a history lesson, a philosophical essay, and Russian folklore wrapped in dark, urban fantasy and magical realism. It’s not a story about family, but a story about survival. It’s not a story about those who lived, but about those who died. I think, most of all, this story is a warning: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Worse than that: history erased is history unheard is history primed to happen again without warning.

Thanks to NetGalley and Anchor for granting me access to this title.

Please note this review is being written as part of a series of backdated ARC reviews that were due earlier in the year but, for one reason or another, I wasn’t able to get to them by the publication date.

File Under: 5 Star Books/Dark Fantasy/Ghost Story/Magical Realism/Standalone Fantasy/Folklore/Mythology/Russian History/Historical Fiction/Urban Fantasy