Book Title: Poison Study
Author: Maria V. Snyder
Series: Study #1
Series: Study #1
Date Started: October 29th 2013
Date Completed: October 31st 2013
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Mystery, Action
Rating: Three stars
Review:
I was expecting something I didn't really get with this book. I didn't know a whole lot about it to start with, but I had some kind of vague expectation in my head. Unfortunately, I don't think it got there for me. I don't want to give the wrong impression, because I did enjoy reading this book, I just ended up a little dissatisfied by the end.
Yelena is sentenced to death for murdering her adoptive carer's son. Nobody believes her accusations of both of their abuse, but nevertheless, she's offered a chance: become the Commander's food taster - running the risk of being poisoned every day - or face the noose. For Yelena, it's a no-brainer, but then when attempts on her life start erupting everywhere, she starts to doubt if she made the right decision. And it isn't only her that's in danger - the whole kingdom may be under threat from within its own government.
The writing was good. At the beginning, I found it really engaging and I was immediately hooked. But once it reached a certain level, the quality just kind of stopped; it didn't keep improving as it went through, and therefore made it a little slower at some points in the book.
However, I really liked the mix of description and dialogue; there was a lot more variety in this book than I see in a lot of Young Adult novels these days, which was a nice change. The action was well written, although sometimes I felt it was rushed, so I wasn't able to picture it completely.
I think the biggest problem with this book for me was the behaviour of the characters. I understand that there's development that happens, and therefore there are some extremes of personality at some points in the book, but every now and then a person would do something completely out of character. I'm always really hard on books with how believable they are, and for me, each character just changed so much so quickly, I found it quite hard to keep a grip on what each person was supposed to be like and how we should feel for them. I don't know if that was possibly because the time went a lot quicker here than in most books - whatever the reason, I just found that quite distracting and unfortunately pulled down my expectations of the book.
The story was also good. I can't really elaborate more. It all felt a bit jumbled and unorganised to me; there was a storyline, but there were so many other little things thrown in that didn't really need to be there that confused me to the point where I just went along with the plot, rather than trying to figure things out for myself.
The background story is great; the idea of someone being trapped in a castle and growing to love the people holding her there is quite common, but I've never read the 'food-taster' explanation. I really enjoyed the little bit of information about Yelena learning to test for poisons - it was actually very fascinating, surprisingly. The experiences she had previously gone through also set things up nicely for this book. It's almost as if Snyder spent all her time working out the backgrounds for each character, but then ran out of time to focus properly on the actual story.
On the other hand, events were able to be tied together at the end, and everything is very nicely set up for the next book.
The characters, despite switching their personalities from time to time, were probably the best part of the book.
Yelena was a very good protagonist. She annoyed me at first; I found myself shouting at her internally to 'get a grip of yourself', all the more since she as constantly being referred to as intelligent, yet she failed to show this until halfway through the book. After this, however, she started to stand up for herself and actually prove that she was intelligent. (I have no problem with characters that can't handle themselves; there are plenty of people who can't in the real world. It just annoys me when they're mentioned as being incredibly talented, but then never show it.)
Valek was good. I got a little confused, as Yelena kept referring to him in the narrative as if he was a wild animal, though I saw little evidence of it in the story. By his actual behaviour, I liked him; he was stern, but to the amount you need to be in his line of work. He was sweet with Yelena, though it did annoy me later when he suddenly morphed into a completely different character when he admitted his feelings. I'm all for romance, but at least keep it a little real.
Ari and Janco were my favourite characters by far. They're adorable; quirky; funny. Definitely like Yelena's big brothers, but because they were fiercely protective of her due to her helping them, there was a flare of friendship in there to rival the sibling-relationship they made. The best and wisest characters by far.
Pacing-wise, there was always something going on, but it wasn't always necessary, and events also became quite repetitive by the end. There was some comparison of the characters in repeated scenes, showing their development, which I assume is why they were included, but it would have been nice to get some unexpected scenes to mix things up a bit.
Overall, I think it's an okay book. I will go on to read the other books, because I do want to know what happened. But I've decided to start being stricter with my star-ratings, and unfortunately that means that Poison Study has to go down a little.
It's got some really good mystery and romance in there, and I can tell the fantasy aspect is going to be developed in the later books, so I think it's definitely worth reading for a nice change from the usual.
Image Source: http://bossbookblogger.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/
poison-study-by-maria-v-snyder.jpg?w=584
I was expecting something I didn't really get with this book. I didn't know a whole lot about it to start with, but I had some kind of vague expectation in my head. Unfortunately, I don't think it got there for me. I don't want to give the wrong impression, because I did enjoy reading this book, I just ended up a little dissatisfied by the end.
Yelena is sentenced to death for murdering her adoptive carer's son. Nobody believes her accusations of both of their abuse, but nevertheless, she's offered a chance: become the Commander's food taster - running the risk of being poisoned every day - or face the noose. For Yelena, it's a no-brainer, but then when attempts on her life start erupting everywhere, she starts to doubt if she made the right decision. And it isn't only her that's in danger - the whole kingdom may be under threat from within its own government.
The writing was good. At the beginning, I found it really engaging and I was immediately hooked. But once it reached a certain level, the quality just kind of stopped; it didn't keep improving as it went through, and therefore made it a little slower at some points in the book.
However, I really liked the mix of description and dialogue; there was a lot more variety in this book than I see in a lot of Young Adult novels these days, which was a nice change. The action was well written, although sometimes I felt it was rushed, so I wasn't able to picture it completely.
I think the biggest problem with this book for me was the behaviour of the characters. I understand that there's development that happens, and therefore there are some extremes of personality at some points in the book, but every now and then a person would do something completely out of character. I'm always really hard on books with how believable they are, and for me, each character just changed so much so quickly, I found it quite hard to keep a grip on what each person was supposed to be like and how we should feel for them. I don't know if that was possibly because the time went a lot quicker here than in most books - whatever the reason, I just found that quite distracting and unfortunately pulled down my expectations of the book.
The story was also good. I can't really elaborate more. It all felt a bit jumbled and unorganised to me; there was a storyline, but there were so many other little things thrown in that didn't really need to be there that confused me to the point where I just went along with the plot, rather than trying to figure things out for myself.
The background story is great; the idea of someone being trapped in a castle and growing to love the people holding her there is quite common, but I've never read the 'food-taster' explanation. I really enjoyed the little bit of information about Yelena learning to test for poisons - it was actually very fascinating, surprisingly. The experiences she had previously gone through also set things up nicely for this book. It's almost as if Snyder spent all her time working out the backgrounds for each character, but then ran out of time to focus properly on the actual story.
On the other hand, events were able to be tied together at the end, and everything is very nicely set up for the next book.
The characters, despite switching their personalities from time to time, were probably the best part of the book.
Yelena was a very good protagonist. She annoyed me at first; I found myself shouting at her internally to 'get a grip of yourself', all the more since she as constantly being referred to as intelligent, yet she failed to show this until halfway through the book. After this, however, she started to stand up for herself and actually prove that she was intelligent. (I have no problem with characters that can't handle themselves; there are plenty of people who can't in the real world. It just annoys me when they're mentioned as being incredibly talented, but then never show it.)
Valek was good. I got a little confused, as Yelena kept referring to him in the narrative as if he was a wild animal, though I saw little evidence of it in the story. By his actual behaviour, I liked him; he was stern, but to the amount you need to be in his line of work. He was sweet with Yelena, though it did annoy me later when he suddenly morphed into a completely different character when he admitted his feelings. I'm all for romance, but at least keep it a little real.
Ari and Janco were my favourite characters by far. They're adorable; quirky; funny. Definitely like Yelena's big brothers, but because they were fiercely protective of her due to her helping them, there was a flare of friendship in there to rival the sibling-relationship they made. The best and wisest characters by far.
Pacing-wise, there was always something going on, but it wasn't always necessary, and events also became quite repetitive by the end. There was some comparison of the characters in repeated scenes, showing their development, which I assume is why they were included, but it would have been nice to get some unexpected scenes to mix things up a bit.
Overall, I think it's an okay book. I will go on to read the other books, because I do want to know what happened. But I've decided to start being stricter with my star-ratings, and unfortunately that means that Poison Study has to go down a little.
It's got some really good mystery and romance in there, and I can tell the fantasy aspect is going to be developed in the later books, so I think it's definitely worth reading for a nice change from the usual.
Image Source: http://bossbookblogger.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/
poison-study-by-maria-v-snyder.jpg?w=584
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