Little Knife:” It’s fascinating to see Bardugo subverting so many traditional fairy tale tropes here. The duke’s daughter Yeva is surpassingly beautiful … so beautiful, in fact, that it literally makes people crazy: nurses and midwives fight over her and try to kidnap her as a baby (her father ends up hiring a blind nurse for her), reasonable men come to blows over her as she grows older, and she can’t ever go outside. The young man left silently through the front door of the house and headed east along the road, toward the sun rising in the gray sky.

I absolutely loved this book. Everything about it was lovely. I highly recommend this if you really are a fan of the Grishaverse or just like fairytales. Bottom line: I love fairytales and I love illustrations and I love the Grishaverse and I goddamn love Leigh Bardugo and this book is a dream and I love it.she’s so good at these that as much as i enjoy her longer books, if she decided to devote herself entirely to fleshing out her imaginary lands through folklore like this, i would applaud her choices without reservation. Lushly designed and wonderfully rendered ... Bardugo doesn’t twist familiar tales so much as rip them open." — Booklist, starred review Ok, this writer just keeps getting steadily better... The stories here? Totally insane! Unexpectedly cool and twisted, in an incredibly good way. These were a vivid collection of stories that I enjoyed. I loved the illustrations and some of them were truly breathtaking. The coveted Fan-Voted Award goes to When Water Sang Fire from Fjerda. Not a spoiler, Bardugo mentioned on social media a known character would make an appearance and posted a fairly obvious excerpt. (No, I won't tell you who is)

Having to wait on the release for this illustrated collection of original fairy tales since the start of the year was nearly excruciating. I even went ahead and read The Too-Clever Fox by Leigh Bardugo a month after the news to calm my eagerness. But here I am finally ready to dive into my long awaited review for this collection! This nightmare-inducing collection is short but powerful, each tale as brilliant and absorbing as the one before…brilliant storytelling.” This nightmare-inducing collection is short but powerful, each tale as brilliant and absorbing as the one before... brilliant storytelling.” — Romantic Times Ayama and the Thorn Wood” is a really enjoyable tone-setter for the series, getting you into the voice, style, and tone of the collection, all the while telling a story of bravery. The dwelling place of its kings and queens was distinguishable only by its six spires that rose like grasping fingers around a craggy plain. Those bony spires were layered with the scales of trench-dwelling creatures so that, in the daytime hours, they glowed with blue light like a captured moon, and at night their chambers and catacombs gleamed phosphorescent in the heavy dark. (c)Apart from that there's only one thing left to say: the illustrations are to die for. This book is so beautifully crafted. It's amazing (and on the other hand a little sad) to see how much effort will be put in a book when the publisher knows that the author is a goldmine. I wish smaller authors would experience this kind of support and effort once in a while. Song was not just a frivolity then, something meant to entertain or lure sailors to their doom. The sildroher used it to summon storms and protect their homes, to keep warships and fishing boats from their seas. They used it to make their shelters and tell their histories. They had no word for witch. Magic flowed through all of them, a song no mortal could hear, that only the water folk could reproduce. In some it seemed to rush in and out like the tide, leaving little in its wake. But in others, in girls like Ulla, the current caught on some dark thing in their hearts and eddied there, forming deep pools of power. (c)