Review - Poison Study
May. 18th, 2009 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wilderthanPoison Study (by Maria V Snyder) is light reading. It's part-fantasy, part-romance. I did enjoy the fantasy parts, such as it was, but I felt it was very light in general. Despite being in first person, I don't feel like you really get to know the main character, Yelena. I don't feel pain for her past abuse, I don't understand why she falls in love, I don't feel hurt for her when she's betrayed or glad when she triumphs. It's not that I don't like her, or that I dislike her, just that I don't know enough about her to care, despite 400 pages of supposedly being in her head. I feel the same about the other characters. I got to like some of them, Ari, Janco, Rand and Valek in particular, but I didn't particularly care if they died, either. While I sort of idly liked Velak, I didn't care enough to be surprised about certain developments in his character. I actually snickered and rolled my eyes at the love scenes, too.
Where there is world-building, it's quite interesting. Having this kind of political set-up in fantasy writing is interesting, since I usually associate it with dystopian sci-fi, but again, it's very light and what is explained is just kind of dumped in there for background instead of really being used.
The plot is also... rather unsurprising. I was several steps ahead of it all the time, including the revelations about Butterfly's Dust.
The writing is also rather light. It doesn't trigger my synaesthesia much at all, so I wouldn't agree with the quote on the cover that this is "magic, excitement and adventure you can almost taste". I didn't bother to whisper much of it to myself.
It's an easy, quick read, a decent sort of book to relax with, but it doesn't offer much that's new or surprising or challenging.
Where there is world-building, it's quite interesting. Having this kind of political set-up in fantasy writing is interesting, since I usually associate it with dystopian sci-fi, but again, it's very light and what is explained is just kind of dumped in there for background instead of really being used.
The plot is also... rather unsurprising. I was several steps ahead of it all the time, including the revelations about Butterfly's Dust.
The writing is also rather light. It doesn't trigger my synaesthesia much at all, so I wouldn't agree with the quote on the cover that this is "magic, excitement and adventure you can almost taste". I didn't bother to whisper much of it to myself.
It's an easy, quick read, a decent sort of book to relax with, but it doesn't offer much that's new or surprising or challenging.
