A WARNING ABOUT SWANS

Hilde may look like a human girl, but she’s not one—though sometimes, she is a swan.

Set in our human past as well as the mystical world of spirits and gods, Hilde’s story takes her from her magical and secluded woodland home into late-1800s Bavaria. Hilde and her five sisters are the daughters of the god Odin, the All-Father. Each of the young women has been endowed with a special gift as well as the ability to turn dreams into reality. Hilde’s desire to distance herself from her particularly macabre skill—“The gift / of greeting / death”—sparks her desire to flee with her new friend, the human boy Baron Maximilian von Richter, leaving behind her duties in favor of human girlhood. When Richter takes Hilde to the great and bustling city of Munich and the court of melancholy King Ludwig II, she meets Franz Mendelsohn, a nonbinary Jewish teen artist. As Hilde and Franz grow close, they strive to create a successful balance between magic and reality, encountering surprising kindness and deep betrayal along the way. Written in sparse free verse, this character-driven queer narrative is an original yet slow-moving story of an otherworldly being trying to find her place in the universe. Though lyrical, the simple poetry and unembellished plot make this milquetoast historical fantasy ultimately fall flat. Main human characters are presumed White; Hilde is darker skinned and has red hair.

A lukewarm historical fairy-tale fantasy.