Review of Poison Study

Title: Poison Study
Author: Maria V. Snyder 
Published: 2005
Pages: 409
My Rating: 4/5


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.
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 had heard good reviews about this book, and after reading Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder, I was keen to read this. I was lucked out when I found the whole Study Series for sale at £5 (or £1.99 each)! 


There were two things that really made me like this book. First of all, I liked the strong female main character. I've read plenty of books with female leads and strong female leads, but it really takes a lot for me to like them. Yet somehow, Yelena won me over. I also liked the dynamic of the other characters (Valek, Ari and Janco).


This brings me to the second point that made me like this book. You get a lot of cliches with YA books, especially in the fantasy genre. But Snyder was able to avoid them in this book. None of the romance was obvious or forced and there was none of the usual love triangles that you get in a lot of YA novels, which I loved!


I did find some of the details a bit confusing and sometimes got a little bored wondering where the story was going. But there were clever non-obvious plot twists and back story told in portions to keep you wonder and reading on.


Overall, I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. Even though I'm not dying to read the next, I will get to it eventually, and look forward to it when I do!

Review of Inside Out

Title: Inside Out
Author: Maria V. Snyder 
Published: 2010
Pages: 315
My Rating: 3/5


I had been looking forward to reading this book for a while. I was immediately captured by the well composed cover art and interesting concept in the blurb.  It seemed like a perfect fit for my dystopia YA fix.

Unfortunately, I'm a little disappointed to say that I was a bit underwhelmed by this. It was basically what I expected when reading the blurb. But that was it, there didn't feel like there was anything more. I found the story line quite uninteresting and confusing, feeling like the main character, Trella was just going backwards and forwards to collect this, deliver that, discuss this... I didn't really feel like the story was going anywhere, and I couldn't get into it.

But this being said, I wasn't totally let down by it, and it wasn't a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. The writing was brilliant, exactly the sort of writing style that I love! It had the classic young adult characters that I'm always a fun of and the concept was brilliant! It definitely ticked all the boxes for a YA dystopia book, and I recommend it to fans of that gene.

Procession of the Dead

So I went into town today at lunchtime to get the book I have been looking forward to getting for a while (Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder) But even though I was told it was going to be in on Tuesday, they still didn't have it, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of ordering it, so I thought I'd wait.
     However, I still didn't have a book to read and I had a gift card leftover from Christmas, so I had a look around and found this book. It's called Procession of the Dead by Darren Shan. I read the blurb and a couple pages, and it seemed quite interesting so I gave it a try. It wasn't until I got home that I realised it was a zombie book. No complaints though; I love zombie books.
Here's the blurb:
Quick-witted and cocksure, young upstart Capac Raimi arrives in the city determined to make his make his mark as a gangster. Then he crosses paths with The Cardinal, and his life changes forever. 
      The Cardinal is the City and the City is The Cardinal. They are joined in soul. Nothing moves on the streets, or below them, without the Cardinal's knowledge. His rule is absolute.
        As Capac begins to discover more about the extent of the Cardinal's influence on this life he is faced with hard choices. And as his ambition soars ever higher he will learn all there is to know about loss, and the true cost of ultimate power ...


So even though it's quite a vague blurb, I thought it looked quite interesting. There will be more of this to come.