Review: Poison Study

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
Series: Study (#1)
Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Choose: A quick death…Or slow poison…

About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She’ll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.

And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly’s Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.

As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can’t control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren’t so clear…

I was really looking forward to reading this book for a variety of reasons. One of those was that some normally sane/calm reviewers that I both follow and respect went completely fangirl over it. Another is that I needed a break from the paranormal genres I usually read.

It started out pretty strong with a main character, Yelena, that I was beginning to really like. She was believable in her role as a soon-to-be-executed prisoner. Bright colors made her squint, she was distracted by open spaces and anything “outside” made her long for freedom.

It’s well written, too.

But…but then I began to notice a lot of inconsistencies with the characters. Valek is supposed to be some sort of all-knowing spymaster yet he can’t see the shady character right beneath his nose? Yelena is basically immobile for a year and yet somehow has the strength and the stamina to be able to swing through the trees like Tarzan for an ENTIRE day? And she wasn’t wearing gloves yet her hands weren’t shredded?

For some reason this book just failed to engage me AT ALL. If you read into the plot line it sounds awesome and even though I guess a lot of things happen it didn’t really feel like anything happened .

This was me while reading it:

You’re being poisoned every morning?

The dad of that dude you killed is looking for vengeance?

You have to taste “The Commander’s” food every meal and run the risk of being poisoned?

Someone tried to kill you?

Someone tried to kill you AGAIN?

Someone else is threatening your life?

Someone else MIGHT be threatening your life?

MAGIX???

I ended up putting it down when I was a little over half way through. I then completely forgot about it. No really. I had to read my notes on it to be able to type this review because I had very few memories of what I’d actually read.

I’m giving it two stars because I feel like this might be a case of me just not being in the right mood/mindset to read this book or fairly rate it. Who knows? I may come back to it later, give it a second try and change my mind. Or I may completely forget about it again. Time will tell.