Book Review: Poison Study

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Yelena is locked in a dungeon waiting to be executed when the Commander’s security advisor, Valek, offers her a deal. She can become the food taster for the Commander, making sure that no would-be assassin has poisoned his food. To make sure she doesn’t use the freedom of her new position to try and escape, Valek poisons Yelena with Butterfly’s Dust. To survive, she has to visit him every morning for a dose of the antidote. Yelena must try and figure out how she can escape now that she’s been poisoned but it’s hard to find time to do that because a rebels are plotting against the Commander. On top of all that, she just found out that she has magical powers she can’t control.

I want to start off this review by reminding my readers that I am not an experienced fantasy reader – if you are, you may want to take my review with a grain of salt.

Yelena is a great, strong female character. She doesn’t play the damsel in distress; she pulls herself up by her bootstraps and learns to kick some ass. She does have a love interest, but I didn’t feel any chemistry between him and Yelena. That subplot felt a little forced to me.

Magic doesn’t play a significant part of the story until towards the end which was actually a plus for me. For some reason, I can get on board with zombies, vampires and werewolves but I have trouble suspending my disbelief when it comes to magic. I think it might be because there are more clear-cut “rules” about what zombies, vampires and werewolves are capable of. Maybe reading more fantasy would cure me of that problem. Overall, I thought Poison Study was a fun, quick read.

Buy this book at:
Kindle Store Powell’s Books