Reviews with content warning for Cannibalism - A Drop of Venom

I am absolutely blown away by this. I expected to like it, but the reverence in which the story is treated and the delicacy in which sensitive topics are handled while still conveying righteous anger made this an absolute five stars for me.

A beautiful story about the anger of women which just a touch of monster x slayer romance. The blending of Medusa's story with Indian mythology made for such an engrossing world. And while it feels like Medusa's story, this one does have a happier ending.

This book is graphic. It's about as graphic as a YA can get and I highly recommend looking up content warnings for this book. There are numerous scenes that refence sexual assault, though the details are rarely (if ever) given when it comes to the assaults on women. There is some pretty real body horror and threats of sexual assaults on men that are given more thorough descriptions.

I would not recommend it to every teen, but for the right people this will be a powerful read.

Content Warnings

faeriviera's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Shoutout to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.

The moment I heard the premise of this story, I immediately wanted to read it. Medusa is one of my favorite "monsters" and I love seeing voices from cultures that aren't often heard giving their takes on classic stories. Add in a forbidden love story between "monster" and slayer to this tale of a woman becoming monstrous against the monsters she faces? What could go wrong?

Well...

I'll admit, this was difficult to get through, and not even because of the subject matter. I feel bad that I didn't like this more, so I'm going to do my best to break this review up into compliment sandwiches.

The author clearly has amazing ideas but the execution left me often struggling to keep reading. Obviously as an ARC the prose isn't in its final form, but as it is it's very uneven, being lush and poetic in one scene and stilted and heavy handed in the next. There are also moments when Patel tries to sprinkle in snarky quips in the middle of something poetic and the tonal whiplash takes me right out of it, especially since as far as "well THAT happened" humor goes, it's pretty weak for the most part. When Patel's prose is good, it's so emotionally impactful and beautiful, and it's part of why the moments when it's not stick out and make the book drag for me. I KNOW she's capable of making this one of those books that rips your still beating heart from your chest and never lets go. Hopefully the final edit shows that.

Additionally, the love story is really poorly developed. It started promisingly, but then Manisha's constant protests against Pratyush's flirting left me cold. The whole point of this story is a hate letter to men who violate women, and while Pratyush is held up as the prime example of "Not All Men", he too could learn a thing or two about taking no for an answer. I really hope this was just a matter of this still being a draft, but this was truly the beginning of my problems with the narrative. It's a shame too, because there are so many moments that would've had me touching my heart if it had been attached to characters I believed belonged together,

particularly Pratyush dreaming of their future together, or their post final battle reunion.

This is a book chockful of interesting concepts.

Noni the Snake is wonderful, I'm always a sucker for animal friends in my fantasy.

I liked the IDEAS of the various societies portrayed in this book (and I must commend Patel for not letting women off the hook for the ways they can perpetuate misogyny), and there were some pretty cool and gruesome fight scenes. Unfortunately, I felt about half of these concepts weren't developed or interesting enough to justify the way the various sidequests ground the pacing of this book to a halt. I also don't think the constant time and POV jumps were the right call for this story, since a lot of this felt like both of our protagonists' stories were spinning their wheels until it was finally time for them to meet again.

I really, really wanted to love this book. As it is, I love the bones of this story, and see a lot of potential for the series Patel is clearly laying the groundwork for, and I hope at least some of these issues are fixed by the time the book comes out on the 16th!

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devynreadsnovels's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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