Poison Study
Author: Maria V. Snyder
Series: Study (#1)
Publisher: Luna
How Received: bought
Choose: A quick death… or slow poison…
About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.
And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly's Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.
As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can't control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren't so clear…
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Ever since I read Snyder's Inside Out, I've been overly curious to dive into her other fantasy. I got a copy of Poison Study and... it sat on my shelf for months.
Luckily, in a fit of being unable to sleep the other day, I started reading it. Eight chapters in the fatigue started to hit me, but I picked it up the next morning and bammed it out in one shot.
Poison Study is fantastic; though I loved Inside Out, and I still have a soft spot for the characters when they're brought up, the story itself hasn't stuck with me very long. I didn't want to reread it right away, I didn't feel any sort of longing to keep it on my shelf - I actually ended up giving my copy away to a friend. I haven't read the sequel, either.
Poison Study, though? Amazon giftcard, here I come. (Unless it's in my local indie book store, which I'll be visiting soon.) I need the sequels in my hands now.
Not because Poison Study leaves some ridiculous cliffhanger - actually, it wraps up the main plot points for the story rather nicely, leaving a livable gap between the two books. But because the characters and the story and the world were so bloody brilliant.
[SPOILER ALERT] My only problem with this book was the predictability at how the scheme with Butterfly's Dust was going to end up. It wasn't that hard to figure out that there was no such thing, especially as early on in the book, Yelena goes days without the antidote in her "My Love" stupor; an observant reader could easily figure it out, so I was surprised when Yelena didn't. Alas. Nobody's perfect, and she did have other things on her mind. So I can look past it. I can't be surprised every time, right? [END SPOILER ALERT]
Speaking of our lovely main character: Yelena seems to be made of pure awesome. She's got a history and she's flawed but she does her best to learn everything she can and train and she's not just insta-good! at everything she does. She has to learn, and she's still not better than some people. (And when she is, well, she deserves it, or there are reasons for it.)
And Valek! Oh, be still my heart! One of the things I loved about this story was that, though I was hoping Yelena and Valek would get together from the moment he offers her the position of poison taster, any potential romance between them wasn't the biggest part of the plot. (How could it be? The Commander might be killed at any moment!) But it was still bloody awesome.
Speaking of awesome things, I want Janco and Ari as my best friends.
Overall Rating & Final Comments: 10/10. I'm planning on picking up the second book soon; loved the characters, loved the world, loved the plot. A must read for fantasy lovers.
Snyder's Poison Study or Inside Out?: Inside Out reads more like a "typical" YA novel, whereas Yelena (though only eighteen) doesn't act like a teenager; she acts more like an adult. However, I loved Poison Study much more than I did Inside Out, in terms of both plot and characters. That might just be my love of fantasy coming out full force, though.