Greenteeth is a fantastic debut novel! There were a few minor things that kept this from being 100% perfect for me. Sentences seemed to be missing a comma fairly often, although this was "fixed" by the fact that I read about half of the book via audiobook. I‘ve also never really seen a “character seems to be doing X while really Y was the plan all along” twist done well. This was far from the worst example of that I’ve seen, but it’s still a kind of twist that always feels a bit cheap. The book is in first person, we literally know the main character's thoughts, so it's just odd that the actual plan is hidden from us. Either way, those gripes are small enough that this is easily a 4.5/5 for me.

This book reminded me a good bit of Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher. Somewhat dark fantasy but with a decently lighthearted tone, too. I’m always a sucker for a story where a party of characters gets together for a quest to save someone or something.

I adored all three of the main characters. Jenny and Temperance had a wonderful friendship, and I loved Jenny and Brackus’ frenemy relationship too. I really liked all of the folklore we got to see from the British Isles, and that it wasn’t just English! The reveal that

the sword was Excalibur

was pretty easy to see from early on (

Chekhov's legendary sword

), but it was still a fun twist; I wasn’t expecting

Jenny to essentially be the Lady of the Lake

though!

All in all, I’d highly recommend this book. The author answered a question of mine in an AMA a few months ago about how her geologist background impacts her writing, and I could definitely see hints of that throughout (who else would use the word botryoidal?) :)

r/Fantasy Bingo 2025 squares: Published in 2025 (HM), Parent Protagonist, perhaps Cozy SFF? (that square's very much in the eye of the beholder, anyway)