CompleteMartialArts.com - Poison Study (Study, Book 1)
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List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
Your Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
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Manufacturer: Mira
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780778324331
ISBN: 0778324338
Label: Mira
Manufacturer: Mira
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 2007-03-01
Publisher: Mira
Studio: Mira
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Editorial Reviews:
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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 Dusté 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—.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: I love it; its so good!
Comment: This book is so good! It's about this girl who is about to be sent for hanging when she is offered the job as a royal food taster. However, she is still being haunted by the father of the man whom she murdered and still is trying to live with a strange sensation going through her. I know that sounds kinda weird but I dont want to give ANYTHING away! The thing you guys have to know is that it doesnt really focus on romance. Its only an undercurrent which was a bummer, but this book was good enough without too much of it!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Decent plot line, but . . .
Comment: The basic premise is decent, but the characterizations are cliche, the love story is very bad romance novel, the world is undeveloped and unclear, the protagonist wins too easily, and the text is filled with colloquialisms that jar the reader out of the story. *** SPOILERS *** The antagonist is using theobroma to drug the Commander? Has the author been reading a little too much Kage Baker? If the magic is like a blanket surrounding the world then are untrained magicians like CO2 and flouro-carbons waiting to eat up the ozone . . . I mean . . . magic blanket?
In all fairness, Ms. Snyder had moments of truly fun writing, especially when Yelena was all by herself and working things out. But Valek, Ari, and Janco were characterizations and not real. And why do the bad guys like Rand always have some physical flaw that tips us off? Sorry, but I can't recommend this book and won't be buying the other two.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Angieville: POISON STUDY
Comment: I remember seeing POISON STUDY on the shelves when it first came out, but passed it up several times because of, yes, I admit it, the cover. It was this older mass market paperback cover and not the lovely new trade paperback. The girl on the old cover looked just a little too haughtily seductive for me. And I knew that Luna was the fantasy division of Harlequin and so I was suspicious it was a romance thinly disguised as fantasy. So when the new trade paperback came out, I went and read a few dozen more reviews just to "make sure" and decided to go ahead and give it a shot. I'm so glad I did. You'd think I'd have learned by now not to judge a book by its cover. Archangel (Samaria, Book 1), anyone?
POISON STUDY opens with a young woman named Yelena imprisoned for murder. A murder she freely admits to committing. When a pair of guards yank her from the dank dungeon she's languished in for almost a year, Yelena is certain she faces imminent death. She even welcomes it in light of the hell her life has become in the past few years. More to come on that bit of nastiness later, we learn. But instead of the gallows, she finds herself in the office of Valek, the chief of national security (i.e. the Commander's Personal Assassin) being offered a choice. To be hung by the neck until dead or to become the Commander's Personal Food Taster. The last one having recently died on the job. Yelena chooses life and immediately begins a crash course in the art of poison detection. To complicate matters, Valek slips Yelena a deadly poison known as Butterfly's Dust to ensure she won't attempt to escape the first chance she gets. In order to survive, Yelena must show up at Valek's door each morning for the antidote. Skip one morning and she'll be dead within 48 hours. And all of this happens within the first few pages of the book. I was completely sucked in by page ten.
The pace never slows throughout the rest of the book as we come to care more and more for this young woman who is forced to court death on an hourly basis. Piece by piece we learn more about why she was in the dungeon in the first place, her complicated background, and the demons that haunt her. Fortunately, her unquenchable will to survive and her quick mind earn her a few choice friends within the compound and these supporting characters are delightful and funny. Then there is Valek, the ruthless assassin who employs his vast array of frightening skills to protect Yelena even as he poisons her, convinced she is the missing piece of the puzzle in his quest to discover who is attempting to overthrow the government and why. I loved this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Inspireing
Comment: Every day since I finished this book, I've had a thought about it, that makes me smile... ^_^
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mediocre
Comment: I don't understand how so many people can give this book a 4 and a 5. I was really excited to read it, but when I did I was so dissapointed. The plot was simple, the characters simple, the setting was simple.
I mean get this, The only picture I have of Yelena's world is a castle, a couple of roads leading from the castle, a forest. I picture...I can't even rememer the country name, but all I can picture is a bunch of square Sectors divided up. EVERYTHING IS SO GENERIC.
I mean, do you realize that this author has just served you Fluff and you're eating it up as some substantial contribution to Fantasy Literature??
Anyway needless to say I won't be buying any more books in this series
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