Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder

I've been on a bit of a fantasy kick ever since finishing A Dance with Dragons, so I've been experimenting with different types of fantasy books I would never have picked up before.  Poison Study is one of them.  It's the first volume in a trilogy following Yelena Zaltana, who lives in the realm of Ixia.  We meet Yelena as she is being removed from the dungeons, on her way to being put to death for committing murder.  But at the last moment, Yelena is offered a reprieve - she can live if she agrees to be the food taster for the Commander, who rules Ixia with an iron fist.  Yelena grabs her chance and the novel follows her through her training and beyond as she comes to grips with the complex political situation in the castle, all under the watchful eye of Valek, the master of spies.  When Yelena starts to show some signs of magical ability, the danger to her increases, as magic in Ixia is punishable by death.

Honestly, I expected to find Posion Study a bit tacky (I was judging from the cover!), a guilty pleasure kind of read, so I was surprised by how honestly good it was.  Yelena is a wonderful heroine and the fantasy elements are seamlessly woven into the plot.  Snyder manages to make the reader understand all about Ixia without having to actually tell us too much about it, something that is surprisingly difficult to pull off in fantasy.  The theme of political intrigue of course transfers over to real life very easily.

I loved reading about Yelena's training to become a food taster.  Snyder goes into a lot of detail about the different types of poisons and the methods that Valek uses to make her become aware of all of them, and I found it completely fascinating.  That kind of detail shows how well thought out Snyder's Ixia is.  Yelena's character undergoes a decent amount of development and the romance plays a back seat to the plot, both of which also work towards making Poison Study such a good read.

Of course, there were things about the book I didn't enjoy so much.  After watching the romance develop so slowly throughout the bulk of the text, I felt like it was resolved too quickly near the end.  The theory behind magic was introduced but never explained fully, although I'm hoping this will be developed later on in the trilogy.  Some of Yelena's new friends were just that bit too nice to be believable in the atmosphere she was living in.

On the whole, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this title.  I'll definitely be picking up the next book in the series.

Source: Library
Score: 4 out of 5