Book: Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder|Narrated by Gabra Zackman

Published November 2005|Published by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd|Run Time: 10 hours, 26 minutes

Source: Audio Book from Audible

Series: Study #1

Genre: YA/Fantasy

Goodreads|Maria V Snyder’s Website

Summary: 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.

Maria V. Snyder is one of my new-to-me favorite authors.  After reading Inside Out and Storm Glass, I knew I wanted to read Poison Study, especially after learning that the Storm Glass series was a spin-off of this one.

The concept of a food taster is nothing new, but I really liked Yelena and how she learned to be a food taster.  What made it more interesting was Butterfly’s Dust, which is what keeps Yelena rooted in her position as food taster.  SPOILER ALERT: She was never actually poisoned- it was just a way to make sure she didn’t escape.  Quite honestly, I should have seen that one coming, and I really wasn’t surprised by THAT particular revelation, but still a good move on Valek’s part.  Otherwise, there’d be no incentive for the food tasters to stay or do their job.

I liked that we got bits and pieces of Yelena’s past.  We learned about how she ended up in jail, and how she was brought to Ixia as a child because of the potential for magical abilities.  Learning everything in bits and pieces was a great move on Snyder’s part, because I was drawn in and wanted to know everything I could about Yelena’s past.  I was pulled into this world where the king was overthrown and how magic is illegal and plots that threaten Ixia and Yelena.

I really liked seeing Yelena navigate the world she’s now a part of of, while trying to deal with her abilities in secret, because that would definitely get her killed.  Yelena is definitely an interesting character who wants to do the right thing.

There are all sorts of interesting characters, like the also interesting Valek.  I was intrigued by the commander, and sort of swooned over Ari and Janco.  There are a lot of interesting relationships between the different characters, and everyone was (surprisingly) not cliche.  Okay, maybe Janco and Ari were, just a little.  But for the most part, I didn’t feel like I was reading about your stereotypical fantasy characters.

Romance!  I was surprised to see that Harlequin published Poison Study, because it was pretty light on the romance.  I like Valek and Yelena together, but they certainly have their work cut out for them.  Them together is slightly predictable but they do make a great couple.

I felt like I got a pretty good sense of the castle and what it looked like, but I couldn’t tell much of what Ixia looked like because we don’t get to see a whole lot of Ixia.  What we do get isn’t memorable, because I couldn’t really tell you much about the rest of Ixia.  However, Snyder does a great job of creating a very vivid world that I want to know more about.

I liked Poison Study as an audiobook and Zackman did a great job with the different voices and accents.  Overall, she was just okay as a narrator but I would have no problem listening to the other books in the series.

Final Thoughts:

I really enjoyed listening to Poison Study, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Yelena as she learns more about her magical abilities and goes back home to Sitia.  I’m looking forward to reading the next book.  Poison Study gets 4 stars.