Poison Study

From time to time, I will pop into my freshman English teacher's room during break or after school to say hi, discuss the school year, my current English class and what I think of it. Usually, the talk turns to the book we're currently reading and why we love it, which leads to book recommendations and exclamations of excitement. We both devoured The Hunger Games Trilogy: she would find me to scream and exalt over the latest twist she'd come to in the plot. On the first day of school, fresh from finishing Mockingjay, I made a beeline for her room to thoroughly discuss our reactions to the book (to read those, look down one post!). In our chat, she mentioned another book I would enjoy: Poison Study, by Maria Snyder.

I bought it a few weeks later, and started it with excitement. I wasn't disappointed. From the first page, I couldn't put the book down. I brought it to school with me and read it under my desk, sneaking pages after quizzes or when I finished something early. The premise captivated me before opening the book, and after diving in, the characters kept me fascinated, along with a fast paced plot. The premise is this: Yelena is a twenty year old girl living in a military-ruled land called Ixia. Yelena killed Reyad son of the General of her district, and is facing death when the former food taster to the Commander dies. Law states Yelena must be offered the job as an alternative to dying. She takes it, but finds herself caught up in court intrigue as well as political problems beyond what she imagined.

One of my favorite things in fantasy books that I feel can "make or break it" is a strong female character (for instance, Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief series, or The Hunger Games). Yelena is one such character. It's always refreshing to see a female who isn't helpless and in distress, and Yelena certainly takes things into her own hands throughout the book, right from the beginning. The reader is always aware that she killed Reyad, the son of the General who commanded her district, for reasons which become clear throughout the book. The guilt and other scars from his death haunt her throughout the book as we see her dealing with her self-hatred and emotional upheaval. It adds a rich layer and depth to her character that makes the story thrilling on a psychological and physical level. Yelena's clever and likeable; she thinks on her feet, is brave, and not afraid to try something new . Her subtle romance with another character is also excellently written, sneaking up on the reader as a pleasant surprise. Unlike so many young adult fiction books, the romance isn't the center of the book, nor is it hitting the reader over the head with clues leading up to their ultimate relationship; what a relief!

Though the writing isn't ornamental, or simply worth reading because of the crafted words, it doesn't hinder the story. I can think of one series of books in particular that I have read in which the plot was fascinating, but I couldn't even finish them because the writing was so terrible. Poison Study isn't remarkable in either direction.

Something that intrigued me, though not really explored in the book, is the idea of why Yelena murders Reyad. Yelena has been submitted to oppression and other darker and more awful consequences at the hands of Reyad, and so she murders him. In the book, Yelena justifies killing Reyad, because of what he's done to her. It's not discussed any further after that, though I wish it had been. True, Yelena is scarred forever by Reyad's actions, and he was awful to her. Yelena feels killing him was her only escape. It's an interesting dilemma to imagine yourself in.

Similar to The Hunger Games, Poison Study has some indefinable quality that makes it "unputdownable." The characters remain in your head, alive and interacting with each other, after you close the book. At school, putting the book down to quickly listen to a teacher was like being jerked out of one world into another, and I lingered in the world of Poison Study through out the school day, not quite focused in my own world. Unfortunately, unlike The Hunger Games, the sequel to Poison Study, Magic Study, is just okay. Gone is that extraordinary quality; the plot is too long and complicated, the romance becomes unrealistic, and somehow, interest is just lost. At the conclusion of Magic Study, I wasn't even interested in the next book. That being said, Poison Study is still so worth reading as a stand alone novel.