Poison Study (Study, #1) (The Chronicles of Ixia, #1)

by Maria V Snyder

How much is your life worth?

In the Territory of Ixia the government maintains control through the Code of Behaviour forbidding the practice of magic, but danger lurks in mysterious places… Imprisoned for murder Yelena Zaltana’s punishment is death, until she is reprieved – for a price.

As the Commander of Ixia’s food taster she will risk assassination from poison daily, a position she would be a fool to refuse… In a world where magic equals death and freedom is for the lucky few, survival is all Yelena has and the battle for her life has just begun.

A CHRONICLES OF IXIA NOVEL

• ISBN10: 0778301923
• ISBN13: 9780778301929
• Publish Date: 1 October 2007 (first published 27 September 2005)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 27 January 2012
• Publish Country: CA
• Imprint: Mira Books
• Edition: Young adult ed
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 416
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[alindstadtcorbeax]

Star Rating: —> 4.5 Stars

What an amazing YA read! I really loved this. Yelena is such a strong woman... her story was fantastic. I don’t have much to say in words which is interesting to me... its just a wonderful feeling of satisfaction. I did admire the bravery, loyalty, & loved the kinships. I just loved it. :-)

Worth a read 100%!

[vagasker]

I believe this was my second reread and I still love it as much!

[jamiereadthis]

Some people are just born knowing how to tell a story. I think Snyder is one of those people.

[Leah]

In my quest to read ALL THE YOUNG ADULT BOOK SERIES, I decided to start with Maria V Snyder’s Chronicles of Ixia series. Why did I choose it first? I don’t know, I must have seen a review somewhere, and I was just so incredibly intrigued with the synopsis for Poison Study. Become a poison taster? For a commander? Risk your life every day, so he can survive, even though it’s his fault you’re in the dungeons awaiting death? INTRIGUING. Right up my alley. Young adult authors love to put their main characters in dungeons or mines, don’t they? Is that what they call a trope? I have no idea, but I like it.

Poison Study was an incredible read, I was captivated from the start and I loved Yelena. I loved how strong she was, despite the fact literally everyone in the castle was rooting for her death, even going so far as to intentionally poison her (naughty) or accost her in the halls and attack her, it just made the book so compelling, as poor Yelena tried to figure out a way to survive/escape, especially since she herself was poisoned, by the confusing Valek, and needed an antidote every day to keep her alive. Spoiler alert: I saw that particular twist coming, I had that part figured out pretty early on actually.

For the first book in a six book series (yay), it set up the world very well, especially with magicians being immediately killed, Yelena’s back story to be revealed because there’s clearly something secret there about her that’s likely going to be revealed in book two. I also didn’t see the romance coming, mostly because I have no idea how old Valek is or how old Yelena is, it’s never explicitly stated and so is Valek the same age? I’m lead to believe he’s not, just for what the book did say, but maybe Yelena is older than I thought, but I have her in her late teens, what with the Reyad thing. Oh, hold the phone! I have consulted GoodReads and Yelena is 19 and Valek 33. I DON’T KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT THIS. There’s part of me that knows that age is just a number, and another part of me is screaming that Valek is in his thirties. However, what I will say is I liked how the romance was handled, it wasn’t full on, Valek wasn’t a terrible person – he did terrible things, which is not the same thing and I was convinced of their feelings for each other, in that love-hate way that is just the best love trope of them all, let’s be honest.

I can’t wait to see where this series goes, Poison Study was fantastic and I can’t wait to be back with Yelena in Magic Study (and I kinda hope that Valek shows up sooner rather than later and that they’re not separated for ages because FEELINGS). Maria V Snyder is a fantastic writer and if, like me, you’ve never read one of her books, do what I did and RUN TO YOUR NEAREST LIBRARY STAT.

[liz089]

Re-reading this novel 5 years later and still loving every little thing about the story. Great characters and beautiful story telling. Love this world.

[jesstheaudiobookworm]

4.5 ★ Audiobook⎮ I've been wanting to get around to this series for quite a while now and I am beyond happy to say that it was worth the wait! There were a couple of things that bothered me a bit (to be discussed), but the plot was so overwhelmingly intriguing that they weren't major detractions. First of all, I loved the focus on poisons. I was initially worried that this story would be alchemy-based and, thus, over my head, but it was not. Snyder must subscribe to the KISS theory (keep it simple, stupid!), because she chose to rely on her writing ability rather than bombard the reader with loads of science-y jargon. Magic actually played a larger role in the story than I was expecting. When I first realized that, I braced myself for the worst. I'm really peculiar about magical stories (Harry Potter generation). Fortunately, the KISS theory also prevailed there and, from what I've heard so far, that's pretty easy to follow too. The magical aspect of the story somewhat reminds me of that seen in Truthwitch, only much better done. The next installment is supposedly more magic-focused, so we shall see if Snyder's brand of magic lives up to my standards.

I thought Yelena was an excellent character and I was immensely happy that Snyder neglected to take the "victim" path with her, instead allowing her to slowly begin to morph into a self-sufficient woman, more than capable of kicking ass. However, I'm not exactly sure of how I feel about her romantic situation. On the one hand, I'm very pleased that the author chose to let it blossom slowly (no insta-love here). On the other hand, this romance is giving off vague vibes of Stockholm syndrome. And, not to be ageist or anything, but coupling an 18-year-old with a 33-year-old in a young adult novel is questionable, especially when considering the Stockholm syndrome aspect. I'll brush my doubts aside for the sake of the story, but I don't think this is a romance I could ever be on board with. Props for ingenuity, though.

But the main thing that bothered me basically from start to finish was the imbalance. Maybe "imbalance" isn't the right term, but I don't know how best to put it. When a story has you on the edge of your seat, it's generally a good thing, right? I think so. But the best stories understand that there is a process of "give and take" to balance out the story. To put it plainly, Yelena was either attacked, abducted, poisoned, or otherwise harmed somehow in nearly every chapter. To begin with, it was what hooked me about the story. But after a while, it got extremely redundant, not to mention exhausting. "Danger lurking around every corner" sounds great at first, but it got old pretty quickly and had me constantly going "Ugh, again?". The thing is, this story did not even need half of those cheap thrills to be captivating. I would have been much happier if the pace has slowed from time to time for a little more anticipation-building and development.

With all of that said, I will most definitely be continuing with this series. I don't know how or where I'll come up with the credits for for more installments (plus the short stories), but hear me now, I will do so!

Narration review: Gabra Zackman was new to me as a narrator, but thoroughly enjoyable. Her narration of Poison Study more closely resembled a performance than a reading. Her distinct impressions of the characters' voices (vocal tones and accents) greatly enhanced my connection to them and to the story. I'm extremely pleased to have discovered her and hope to hear her work soon again! This audiobook also boasted a musical melody in between chapters which helped to set the atmospheric tone, as well as retain my attention, and let me know a new chapter was beginning (that's helpful). However, it should be noted that the audible quality of this audiobook was not the best. It had a noticeable echo, similar to what you would hear from a bootleg recording, not an Audible purchase. It wasn't anything that prevented me from enjoying the audiobook, but others may have a bigger problem with it than I did. I suggest listening to the sample to gauge your tolerance of it before purchase. Subsequent installments do not seem to have this problem. * I'm interested to hear if any other listeners detect listening quality issues or if the problem was something on my end. ♣︎

[Leigha]

A young woman on death's door agrees to become the food taster for the Commander, the highest ruling official of Ixia.

This book did not capture my attention as quickly as the Healer series by Maria V. Snyder, but it was still enjoyable. Yelena was an interesting character, constantly hinged between fleeing and fighting for her and other people's lives. While I enjoyed the secondary characters of the series, I wished for more fleshed-out female characters. The ending felt really rushed as it attempted to tie up the loose ends of this story line, and yet lay the ground work for the next book in the series.

The romance was very slow to develop. It took me a while to even figure out Yelena's supposed love interest, and then it took forever for anything to develop beyond sorta friendship. I would have liked a bit more on that end. The setting also never really developed. Little details were sprinkled throughout the novel of both the setting as well as Yelena's characterization, yet I never felt like they were fully formed. Perhaps the rest of the series will delve further into everything.Finally, the formatting of the Kindle edition seemed off. In the middle of chapters it would switch from one scene to a completely different scene with no context (spacing, line squiggles, etc.). It was very disconcerting, but it happened often enough that I eventually got used to it.Fair warning, there are some scenes depicting violence against women.

tl;dr If you enjoy stories about women overcoming their demons, this story is for you.

[ross91]

Very good book! I liked Yelena, especially because she wasn't the usual YA female protagonist that is always perfect and good at everything. I really enjoyed the premises and the plot was interesting! Sometimes though I thought it was kind of repetitive.
Valek is super cool.

The first time I read this I hadn't been able to finish it. This time around I couldn't put it down. Clearly the first time I read it I just wasn't in the mood.

Poison Study is hard to put down, I found it really entertaining. The beginning and whole first half is intriguing, however I found the last 30% to move rather fast. Things happened and then moved straight to something different, it was weird and left me wanting answers. It had me feeling rushed.

Still, I definitely will be picking up the next book.

(Warning: This review is probably going to contain the word amazing in every single second sentence)

This book was an amazingly awesome surprise! I stayed up until 4am in the morning, just so I could finish this un-put-down-able book.

Yelena is such an amazing main character. She has a whole load of demons inside of her that she needs to fight and boy does she fight them. She is able to admit when she's wrong, but she also doesn't accept things the way that they are. She's a smart, tough fighting machine.

When I first met Valek, I did not guess that he was going to be Yelena's love interest because he was so cold and calculating, but after I got to know him through Yelena's eyes, I couldn't help but love Valek, the amazing assassin. Yelena and Valek, together, make such a deadly team (I wouldn't want to get on their bad side).

The secondary characters were either characters that I hated with my guts or they were characters that I couldn't help but love especially Ari and Janco.

This book was a fast paced, fun read that drew me into a world of poison, which was an amazing and interesting concept, magic, which has so much amazing potential, world building and politics, which was easy to understand, amazing fight scenes and amazing romance without any insta-love.

This book reminded me why I love the fantasy genre so much and I can't wait to read book two!