Review: Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder

I'm giving this book: 5 out of 5 stars

This book is definitely what you call amazing. Fast-paced and beautifully written, I can’t help but falling in love with the story.

Yelena is so close to dead. She’s awaiting executioner, and finally her time comes. But Valek, the Commander’s personal security chief and leader of the vast intelligence network for the Territory of Ixia, has different agenda for her. He offered her a job as a Commander Ambrose’s new food taster.

A chance to live and Yelena is not a fool. She accepts the job, despite the chance that death will come with the next bite. Valek is in charge of training new food taster, so Yelena gets to spend many times with him in her first days in castle. As days pass, she begins liking her job. She can learn as much as she wants in Library, and somehow, Valek is always there to protect her from her enemies. Without fully realizing it, Yelena has been dangerously drawn into her assassin boss.

Valek is not the least of her worries. Her enemy General Brazell will come to visit the castle. Yelena has killed his son, and Brazell won’t let her slip away. No one knows the truth about Brazell and Yelena, and she can’t trust the knowledge to anyone yet. Yelena has tried her best to maintain her fragile peace days in castle, but when a magician from neighbor country comes to kill her, she finally gets to know the truth about her nature. The reason of Brazell and his son’s experiment to Yelena, and a chance to escape to neighbor country, even if it means leaving Valek...

No need to say that I love the books! The characters are simply loveable, and awfully captivating. Yelena is admirably smart, and it’s a fresh break to take from reading too much not-so-brilliant heroines. She’s also very brave and strong-willed, and I love that she can make people admit her skills. Through the story, Yelena gets a chance to study about self-defense, and as you may already guessed, she becomes amazingly skilled in fights.

It’s very fun to read Yelena interacting with other characters, such as Valek, Ari, Janco, and Irys. Her relationship with Ari and Janco is one of the most pleasant aspects of Magic Study. In short, I love everything about this story. It gets everything you ask: adventure, friendship, tension, and nice touch of romance. A definitely must read!

Could the strange buzzing sound that erupted from my throat and saved my life really be the same as Irys’s power? If so, I must keep my magic a secret. And I had to gain some control of the power to keep it from flaming out. But how? Avoid life threatening situations. I scoffed at the notion of evading trouble. Trouble seemed to find me regardless of my efforts. Orphaned. Tortured. Poisoned. Cursed with magic. The list grew longer by the day.