The Language of Thorns - Leigh Bardugo [Review]

Title: The Language of Thorns

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Fiction.

Publisher: Imprint

Publishing date: September 26th 2017

Pages: 281

Rating

★★★★★

The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo is a collection of fairytales set in the same world of The Grisha Trilogy and Six of Crows.

“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.”

I don’t really know how to start this review, what can I say? I totally loved the book.

First of all this is a physically beautiful book, the design in the hardcover is gorgeous; it looks elegant and mysterious with and without the dust jacket. The book pages are full color and each page has a frame that adds more elements with each page until forming a final two pages illustration that sums up the story. The frame is like an animation book, if you pass the pages fast, you can see it as a small animation. 

The Stories in order are:

♦Ayama and the Thorn Wood: A girl is sent to the woods to calm a beast.

♦The Too-Clever Fox: A fox tries to get rid of a hunter to protect the woods it lives in.

♦The Witch of Duva: A girl escapes from her home and meets a witch.

♦Little Knife: A man tries to win the hand of a princess with the help of a river.

♦The Soldier Prince: A Nutcracker has existential crisis over who he is and what’s his purpose in life.

♦When Water Sang Fire: this is some kind of retelling of the Little Mermaid.

Out of the six stories, the Too-Clever Fox was my favorite, and my favorite illustration too, to be honest the six stories are beautiful and whimsical. Almost all are some kind of retelling, but they all have this fairytale vibe with feminist touches, and dark and unexpected twists.

The stories are short but engaging, they hook the reader since the start and all of them has this feminist message that women do not need men to save them.

I you like fairytales full of magic, interesting stories and beautiful illustrations, you really should read this book, you won’t regret it, it’s absolutely beautiful!