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

I didn’t plan on writing a review for Language of Thorns, Leigh Bardugo’s return to the Grishaverse, but I had to. You see, Language of Thorns is a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous book, and I just want to talk about it with everyone.

Its beautiful cover (which is BEAUTIFUL) is only the start of the book’s wonders. Once you open it, you’re treated to illustrations from Sara Kipin, who imbues each page with tantalizing imagery that crawls through the margins, tracing each story’s path. As I read, I kept an eagle eye on the changing illustrations which eventually become lush, full-page artworks. I’m a dedicated ebook fiend, and I only buy physical books for the sake of decoration (or signings), but Language of Thorns was an instant buy. It can’t be appreciated in the same way in an ebook format, which won’t do justice to the artwork (though it’ll still be super beautiful!).

Bardugo is in fine form, but I’ve come to expect that from her. Each story is beautiful and magical and ultimately lovely. It opens with the tale of a plain and ignored girl sent to save her village from a rampaging beast and closes with an ambitious mermaid who sings powerful spells. In between there are toys looking to live lives of their own, a man turning the tide in the hopes of using it to win a beautiful girl’s hand in marriage, a girl discovering a witch in the woods, and a fox attempting to outsmart a hunter. A few of these stories readers may have already read, but there’s plenty of new material, and all of it is carefully, intricately written, brimming with magic, and smartly subverting common mythic and fairy tale tropes (if you’ve ever thought that the prince in the fairy tale actually ain’t shit, this is the story collection for you.) All are beautiful, but particularly so is “When Water Sang Fire”, a story of ambition, music, magic, friendship, and betrayal that makes for an arresting finale.

Though they read as fables and fairy tales, in Bardugo’s Grishaverse, it’s likely all are (at least somewhat) canonically true. There’s even a sighting of The Darkling, villain and love interest in the Shadow and Bone trilogy. (If there was a sighting of Six of Crows’s Kaz Brekker, I missed it, but I’m sure someone will inform me if I did.)

It didn’t even occur to me Bardugo would revisit the Grishaverse until Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, which span parts of the world unseen in Shadow and Bone. But if she writes about this universe forever, I won’t be mad. Language of Thorns bridges gaps as well, conveniently labeling stories from their countries of origins (Noyvi Zem, Ravka, Fjerda, and Kerch) so now I’m longing for more forays into the Grishaverse to see what other stories linger there. So it’s appropriate that, on Thorns’s release date, Entertainment Weekly announced King of Scars, a duology due out in 2019 about Ravka’s king, Nikolai.

Thank goodness.

And thank you, Leigh Bardugo.

Rating: 5/5 Stars