Poison Study
by Maria V. Snyder

(Sidenote - I like the new cover a lot more. This chick looks like she belongs on the cover of Seventeen and did not fit my image in any fashion of a woman who has been in a dungeon for over a year).

At the beginning of the novel, Yelena is about to be executed for murder, but she's offered a choice by Valek, a sleek, amoral killer himself who heads up the Commander's spy network. She can take the quick death or choose a slow death as the Commander's food taster. Not being a fool, she decides to delay her demise and chooses to undertake the training as a poison taster.

Snyder writes well in first person, which can be difficult, and Yelena is a great character. The castle intrigue was well-done and I enjoyed the hell out of Valek. He's like a combination of Snape from Harry Potter and the assassin from the Brust novels. Very cold, very inscrutable, and yet the reader thrills to imagine melting his reserve, finding out what's really beneath that icy exterior.

The castle intrigue was extremely well done and the Commander was an interesting character. However, why did Yelena have to possess latent magical powers that kicked in anytime she was in trouble? (Aside from the fact that Ms. Snyder wanted to write a sequel called Magic Study.) The suspense became a touch tedious because you knew the time-slowing-down thingie would kick in and she would tingle all over, and then somehow her enemies would be vanquished, or she would have gotten away. Generally speaking (don't want to spoil) I wish, for once, the poor orphan in fantasy would turn out to be a fucking orphan instead of being a long-lost prince or princess, or the member of some clan or other.

I enjoyed the book, but there were a couple other things that bothered me. I know it can be hard for fantasy writers to flesh out a romance while doing other things in the story, but this one turned on a dime. It felt mechanical, like the author decided, "This is the point where they must share their feelings," so Valek tells Yelena she's held his heart for weeks, and then they do it (the one sex scene in the book) in the dirty straw of a dungeon. The writer tries to gloss over that point, making sure the reader knows that the hide-the-sausage action is so transportive that the two principals don't realize they're in a smelly dungeon anymore, but...ehm...

Good book. Worth reading. But not without its problems. It started out strong, ended on a whimper, if you ask me.

Don't even get me started on Magic Study.

Labels: reviews