Last week was hard. We had a perfect storm of stressful situations at work. I had a bad experience with my first time trying to donate platelets. The political situation in the United States remains a disaster. In the midst of all of this, I started trying to read a critically acclaimed novel in translation with a very serious premise. Y’all. I just could not. I am sure the book is great, I am sure I will read it someday. But last week was not the time for critically acclaimed literature. Last week was the time for something cozy.
Of course, as I’ve already established here, I’m really picky about cozy fantasy. Would my latest read delight or disappoint? I am pleased to say that Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill landed firmly on the side of “delight.” I was captivated from the first line.
I don’t put a lot of faith in comps or book blurbs, and in fact, I have a whole rant that I’ll write someday about comps and how badly implemented they are. But Greenteeth is described as “perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher and Travis Baldree” and has a T. Kingfisher blurb on the front cover, and it fits. This is a very Kingfisher-esque book, while still having enough of its own character to not feel like a cheap knock-off.
So what is this thing anyway? Quite simply, it’s the story of a witch, a water faerie, and a goblin teaming up to deal with the parson who threw the witch in the faerie’s lake. But of course there’s a lot more than that going on.
Our narrator and main character is Jenny Greenteeth. If you went through a big faerie lore phase like I did, you may already be familiar with her. For those of you who didn’t take that same path through nerddom, let me fill you in. Jenny Greenteeth is a faerie who lives in the pond that your parents told you to stay away from; unwise children who play in the pond will be pulled under and eaten by the hag.
O’Neill takes this basic bogey(wo)man archetype and makes her into a unique character. Yes, Jennies live in the pond/lake; no, they’re not hags; maybe they will eat children, but not if they’ve just had a good meal (you have to be really hungry to eat an entire child). They’re a solitary fae that reproduces asexually. Our particular Jenny likes to keep her pond tidy and shares her meals with a pike.
When local witch Temperance is dumped into Jenny’s lake, she’s not feeling particularly hungry, so she rescues the witch from drowning. This serves as the inciting incident that turns Jenny’s routine life upside down.
I’ll admit, for some reason I had it in my head that this was a sapphic book; I think based on the cover copy I assumed Jenny and Temperance would hook up as well as teaming up, but actually Temperance is happily married and her primary motivation is getting back to her husband and young children. Greenteeth is not an explicitly queer book, but I would say it can be read as implicitly queer; Jenny can be read as ace/aro, and while Temperance loves her husband, that relationship isn’t the defining one of the book. This is a story about friendship and found family, as Jenny and Temperance team up with Jenny’s goblin merchant frenemy to go on a quest to get the items they need to deal with the parson.
I loved that this book drew heavily on the faerie lore and Welsh folklore that I was obsessed with a good twenty-five years ago, instead of slapping the “fae” label on some generic dark and brooding bad boy and calling it a day. I loved that Jenny reminded me of T. Kingfisher’s older narrators, with her wry and world-weary tone. And I loved that it was my favorite kind of cozy, where there ARE stakes and there IS peril, but you trust in the author to see you and the characters through to the other side.
The stakes and peril definitely lean more towards the T. Kingfisher side of things; not quite as heavy as A Sorceress Comes to Call, but definitely more high-stakes than Legends & Lattes or The Teller of Small Fortunes. There were some genuinely harrowing scenes in this book.
While, like with so many other books I read, I would have preferred if this book was more implicitly queer, it did still end up being exactly what I needed to get me through some difficult days last week. This is Molly O’Neill’s debut novel and I will definitely be keeping an eye out to see what she does next. I hope you’ll give her a chance, too.
CWs and TWs: Fantasy violence. Violence against animals and animal death (I promise, the dog doesn’t die). Children in peril. Religiously-motivated persecution and violence.
Source and Format: I borrowed the ebook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Reading Challenge Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): Fractured Fairytales & Folklore. To give you an idea of how Kingfisheresque this book is, I had planned to fill this square by reading the T. Kingfisher Snow White pastiche coming out later this year, but Greenteeth came along first and fit so perfectly.
Reading Challenge Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 6 of 25, no bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 8 of 25, no bingos.
Book Riot: 10 of 25.
Physical TBR: 2 of 12.
Brick & Mortar: 19 of 25, 3 bingos*.
*I’ve completed several of the non-reading prompts, hence the mismatch with the number of reviews!
World of Whimm: 10 of 24, no bingos.