Review: The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass

Title: The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy 

Format read: Paperback book 

Bought or borrowed? Bought with a gift card to Glass Bookshop, from a dear friend 

Motivation: I have yet to purchase a lot fiction from GB, mostly getting a lot of social commentary and nonfiction from them, and this title just sounded so intriguing! The cover is b e a u t i f u l and the summary hooked me. 

Content warnings: PG-13-level-violence, loss

Summary

Eli is a ghost hunter, made by witches to track down wayward spirits in the human world. Trained from her making to be deadly with seven living blades, Eli is known among her kin as a flawless killing machine. Until one day, an assignment goes wrong and she must try to fix her mistake before the Coven can find out and unmake her. This mission-gone-wrong makes Eli question everything she has been taught all her life. As she learns more about humans and witches, she teams up with friends new and old, human and witch, while trying to discover more of the truths about two worlds, mysteriously and magically connected.

Thoughts, Feelings

Days after finishing this novel, I felt like I was still chewing on a lot of questions. The story is told from a third person limited perspective, kind of on the shoulder of the titular girl, Eli. As a result, the mechanics of the world are not fully explained, since Eli already knows how everything works. And while there are aspects of the story which allow for some exposition — Eli bringing Tav and Cam into the City of Eyes, for example — Eli’s character is not inclined towards lengthy explanations, so nothing is fully fleshed out even when she does explain it.

I mean, I guess what I have trouble with is that the “magic physics” don’t really make sense. And I was confused about the difference between the City of Eyes and the City of Ghosts, and what the relationship between the two cities (worlds?) was. I got the impression that the chaotic nature of the City of Eyes is kind of the point, so I don’t count this against the book, per se. I don’t think it’s a bad thing necessarily, to still have questions about the world built by the author. It just wasn’t quite as satisfying to me; the worldbuilding felt a little too unfinished for my taste.

I am interested in the sequel, all the same. The characters themselves are fun, and I’m curious to know if these remaining questions are answered in the continuation of the story! I especially loved the descriptions of Eli’s “living blades”; it reminded me a lot of the necromancer’s bells in The Old Kingdom series. I won’t lie, I basically fell in love with Tav and their purple spiky hair from the moment they were introduced, and Cam, the other human along for the adventure, reminds me a lot of Sokka from The Last Airbender tv show. An excellent, engaging cast!

Overall, this was a great read to break through a lot of non-fiction I was fixated on this past winter. I think Jerreat-Poole has good chops and I hope they keep things coming.