Poison Study - Maria V. Snyder

Initial impression: I never thought a story about a food taster would interest me to read a book.

 

Actually, I’m having a hard time trying to point out if this book is YA or Adult. Some say YA and others say Adult because there are sensitive issues included here that doesn’t fit for YA.  

 

This book was beautifully written. The opening line hooked me and reading the first few pages made my eyes teary because of the way it was written. Am I the only one who gets teary-eyed whenever I read a book that is beautifully written? Yup, maybe I am.

 

Told in Yelena, the heroine’s POV with some flashbacks. The story was fast paced. I was never bored. Before I knew it, I was done reading the book and I couldn’t wait to start the next book right away. But I have to calm myself because according to some reviews about this series, (take note, I didn’t read reviews about Poison Study before I decided to read it, contrary to my pre-reading rituals of reading reviews first before actually reading the book, this time I read reviews after reading the book itself) the sequel was not as awesome as this first but still I would have to judge it by myself though I respect other readers opinion about it.  

 

The characters are likeable. Yelena, despite of the hardships she’d been through, she turned out to be a strong heroine. Witnessing her from being in her lowest evolved into a badass heroine was amazing and I’m anxious to know how she would become in the next book. Then Valek, at first I never thought that he would be the love interest of Yelena but as I kept on reading I fell for this man. He was loyal to the Commander. He was smart, tactical, strong, brave, and seemed always have a plan and one step ahead of everything (that’s why Yelena once called him Mr.-Know-Everything) and one more thing…HE….CARVES…!!! There were times that he was annoying but that only added up to him being sexier in my opinion. Also, Ari and Janco were adorable. The friendship they created with Yelena was beautiful and fun to read. M/W friendship like that was awesome; I envy Yelena for having those two. But if there were likeable, there were also unlikeable characters in this book, namely Margg (guh), General Brazell (evil), Reyad (go to hell), Mogkan (ass****), and Nix (gross).

 

I really liked the actions/fighting/training/tests scenes. Some were brutal. Some were pure evil. But some were also exciting.

 

Another thing I liked about this book was the world building. This book was set in Ixia, contained 8 Military Districts (MD-1 to MD-8) being ruled by Commander Ambrose and there was another place called Sitia, where the magicians resided because they were prohibited by the Ixia’s Commander to stay in Ixia.

 

Thank goodness there’s no LOVE TRIANGLE in this book. The romance was not forced; it blossomed in a slow, realistic and beautiful way.      

 

I would definitely recommend this book to those who love fast pace story, fantasy, and romance that doesn’t really over takes the story but with open mindedness because this book contains a certain amount of brutality including a sensitive issue not favorable to women.

 

#I noticed I used the word beautiful in this review a few times because this book was just BEAUTIFUL