GREENTEETH rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐.
What a debut! After yesterday–because I read the cozy fantasy GREENTEETH (Orbit/Hachette, February 25, 2025) in a single day–I’m a new fan of author Molly O’Neill. She knows her myths.
A goblin, a river spirit, and a witch walk into a bar. . .no, actually, they walk into the court of the Fairy King and Queen by way of enchanted fairy roads, and are given three quests in order to craft a magic weapon to defeat the bad guy. Can you resist this premise? You aren’t my people if you can.
A preacher shows up in a medieval English backwater called Chipping Appleby and turns out to be possessed by a wicked and ancient being, the Erl King. He doesn’t condemn Temperance Crump to death by drowning out of mere prejudice against healing women: Temperance doesn’t realize what a powerful sorceress she is, and therefore a threat to “Pastor Braddock’s” nefarious plans. Temperance is saved from death by Jenny Greenteeth, also a very ancient being, who lives in the river. As folklorist and podcaster Icy Sedgwick explains in her “Strange River Folklore: River Gods and Dark Spirits”: “[T]he grindylow appears in British folklore as a cautionary tale. Sometimes known as Jenny Greenteeth, the grindylow lurks in English rivers, ponds and marshes. According to the legends, these nasty critters dragged children into the deepest parts of the rivers if they ventured into the shallows.” (icysedgwick.com, “Folklore,” March 13, 2021). Despite her reputation, Jenny is good-hearted and keeps her river quite neat and tidy.
I was delighted with Jenny’s narrative voice from the very first sentence. This is how you do a first-person narrator.
Jenny pulls Temperance into her river cave full of treasures and they become friends. . .mostly. It’s a troubled friendship, full of misunderstandings. Temperance wants to go back to her family (without being executed for witchcraft again) and needs the help of Jenny’s deep power drawn from the river. They are driven to seeking the assistance of the Fairy King when they fail miserably to defeat the evil Erl King who has possessed Braddock’s body.
For three quests you need at least three questers, and the witty goblin Brackus, who sells treasures from the goblin market from his bottomless sack, makes up a third. It’s his idea to seek out the Fairy King who used to lead the Wild Hunt before he went into retirement. As a traveling salesman, Brackus knows the roads, including the fairy roads, and realizes that they will need to tap into far greater power to have any chance against such a foe.
For a bonus quester we have a dog! Lady Creiddylad, the Fairy Queen, equips the group with magic and advice, like Galadriel in Tolkien’s THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (July, 1954), only Galadriel didn’t have a tall, rangy Wild Hunt hound named Cavall to send with the Fellowship. Cavall is itching for a good run.
Fairy court, goblin market goods, epic hound dog, found family, Welsh-ish names, epic journeys: GREENTEETH has everything a fantasy fan needs for a few hours of summer pleasure reading.
The twist/big reveal at the end? Magnificent. I felt dumb for not having predicted it given all the clues, but I’m glad I didn’t. Unless I come across some more super-fun reads, GREENTEETH will very likely make my list of top 10 books of 2025.
Reading in context:
Gender-bending ladyknights seem to be a theme in 2025 fantasy novels, and you can add Temperance and Jenny to the list. You won’t want to miss the third installment in the “Legends and Lattes” series by Travis Baldree, BRIGANDS AND BREADKNIVES (Tor/Macmillan, November 11, 2025), in which rattkin bookseller Fern sort-of-accidentally becomes the squire of Astryx, warrior of legend and ballad, or THE EVERLASTING by Alix E. Harrow (Tor/Macmillan, (October 28, 2025), a time-loop extravaganza starring ladyknight Una Everlasting. The romance in THE EVERLASTING had me in tears, and the depth of Harrow’s character development of the villain was astonishing.
What I’m reading now:
THE STRENGTH OF THE FEW by James Islington (Saga/Simon & Schuster, November 11, 2025), the second novel in the “Hierarchy” series.
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