Reviews with content warning for Murder - A Venom Dark And Sweet

Der gelungene Abschluss der Tee-Magie Dilogie.

Bei diesem Satz könnte ich es eigentlich belassen, aber…
Alle Handlungsstränge die im ersten Teil aufgeworfen wurden werden nun zu einem durchdachten Ende gebracht. Und es gilt auch weiterhin was ich bereits beim ersten Teil gelobt habe. Die Welt ist wunderschön und ich habe es sehr genossen nun andere Winkel von Daxi zu erkunden. Auch war es ein weiteres Mal sehr erfrischend, dass dieses Buch ohne große Kämpfe auskommt und wenn dann diese nur eine Nebensächlichkeit sind.

Aber im Laufe der Geschichte hatte ich mehr und mehr das Gefühl, dass die einzelnen Plotpoints nur noch abgearbeitet wurden. Stand im ersten Band noch die sich ständig wechselnden Beziehungen der Charaktere im Vordergrund habe ich kaum noch was von dieser Magie gespürt. Siehe ggf. Spoiler.

An zu vielen Stellen hatte ich einfach das Gefühl hier wird auf Zwang was fürs große Finale vorbereitet. War das Magiesystem im ersten Teil noch faszinierend und hatte immer einen mystischen Aspekt war es jetzt allenfalls noch pragmatisch.

Ich will dieses Buch mit diesem Rant auch absolut nicht schlecht reden, es ist und bleibt trotzdem eine super Geschichte, aber es ärgert mich da ich nach dem ersten Teil noch so unfassbar viel Potenzial gesehen habe. Vielleicht hätte ein dritter Teil der Serie gut getan. Um einfach gewissen Handlungen mehr Raum zu geben. Ich hätte auch gerne mehr von Shu gesehen, hätte gerne die Beziehung von Zhen und Ruyi erforscht und eine echte Charakterentwicklung bei Kang gesehen.

das Misstrauen was immer noch zwischen Zhen und Ning herrschte wurde nie bewältigt, sondern in einem Satz am Ende weggewischt. Das Ning ihre Magie jetzt auch mit Essen wirken kann war einmal kurz praktisch und wurde dann nie wieder aufgegriffen. Was ist mit Shu und ihr Wunsch wieder Magie zu wirken, auf einmal hat sie ne magische Feder aus dem Nichts und das war’s. Das ganze Buch arbeitet literally auf den Besuchs Nings bei der Eremitin hin und dann wird auch das in einem Kapitel abgearbeitet. Kang macht so gut wie gar keine Charakterentwicklung mehr durch und seine Kapitel sind völlig überflüssig. Der Leser ahnt doch bereits das der Kanzler die Schlange ist und muss nicht das halbe Buch lang mitverfolgen wie Kang in Selbstmitleid badet um dann mehr zufällig als erarbeitet den „großen Plottwist“ mit dem Kanzler zu erleben. Auch der Konflikt zwischen seiner Liebe zu Ning und der Treue zu seinem Vater wird nie zu Ende gespielt sondern einfach durch den fast beiläufigen Tod des Vaters unnötig gemacht. Ganze Charaktere wie Lian, Nings Vater oder der Sternendeuter werden zum Schluss nicht mal mehr erwähnt< /spoiler>

Content Warnings

sophiesmallhands's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

sinceraly's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

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

2.75

After I finished A Magic Steeped in Poison, I rushed to my Libby app and rented the ebook version of A Venom Dark and Sweet. I had so much anticipation to what I thought would be an excellent follow up to a very exciting ending with a lot of intrigue set up. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed by what I got instead.

Like always, we start with the pros:
The world building. A Venom Dark and Sweet carries on the excellent world building as it's predecessor, with the world of Dàxi being something unlike anything I've ever been taken through as a reader. I love how the author makes her own spins on Chinese legends, and how the book has a sort of myth-become-real vibe. It makes you, as the reader, really want to pay attention to the foundational stories of the kingdom to better understand how things work.

The magic system. I still think the usage of tea as a conductor of the brewer's magic is brilliant, but I was sad to see it get so much less screentime than in the first book. I'll expand on that later.

Kang's point of view chapters. I thought it was interesting to see him grapple with the actions of his father, and it added a lot to what could otherwise be a bit of a dull read.

The section with The Hermit. Won't expand on this because I don't want to spoil for any potential readers!

I really wish there was more I could say about the book positively, but that's all that comes to mind a mere two days after reading it. The negatives are a lot more prevalent in this book, almost entirely because so much revolves around the weakness of Ning as a main character.

Ning is a very bland main character. By the end of AMSIP I was confident that she had grown enough to be an interesting main character, but she hadn't. Even the addition of her sister as a traveling member for the first half of the book did nothing, really, except make it even more clear that she really does not have much of a personality beyond caring about her family. Sometimes the author would play with something interesting - like Ning being tempted to give into a terrible force if only to avenge the people who sacrificed everything to help her, or her anger and distrust of Kang from his betrayal - and then it'd just get completely swept over with no trouble. I want to make one thing clear: what makes a main character interesting is not their immediate and stable sense of morality, impervious to any sort of temptation or tarnishing, but their internal conflict of keeping with that morality. Every time Ning had a moment to question whether or not she wanted to be honorable, it would be dealt with by a simple "ah, but that's what the bad guys did!" And that was the entire depth to her character development.

The romance is just bad. I really tried to give it a pass, especially considering that I like Kang a lot, more than I liked Ning, and I did see potential in it from the first book. But the lack of any sort of actual chemistry with these two is just so obvious. Every time they'd think of each other, it felt like the author was waving a big, lit up arrow sign ala Las Vegas Strip that just said "they love each other, guys! source: just trust me." I liked the idea of Ning having shown Kang that shit wasn't right, and that leading to doubt in his father's plans. I liked the idea of Ning being torn on Kang because of his betrayal. I did not like how they just fell back into loving each other and trusting each other so easily after having their relationship shatter the first time. I do not like how their relationship skipped over them actually being friends, being equals in each other's eyes. I do not like how their relationship gets mentioned by Ning more often than the people who literally died in their attempt to help her escape from the besieged palace. I do not like this relationship set up, Sam I Am.

The lack of the actually interesting side characters. With the exception of Kang, who had the more interesting chapters of the book (because the book remembered its actually also supposed to have political intrigue in his chapters), the more interesting characters of the first book are either minimally included or not at all. The kitchen staff show up just to point out to Kang that shit isn't as it seemed with his father - which seemed like a waste, to me, since he had already been figuring that out on his own, and it would have hit much harder if it didn't take the commoners telling him that his dad was being manipulated by a demon. There is also the fact that the Zhen, Ruyi, and Shu, the main supportive cast, straight up get left behind halfway in and then play the most minimal roles possible, while also being the more interesting characters there even as the author seasons their personalities with "we only care about what Ning thinks" sauce.

WHERE IS THE TEA. So much of the first book was straight up carried by its super unique and awesome tea magic system that's almost absent from the second book. The author does explain it, and it does make sense - tea based magic is limited to being able to perform a tea making ritual every time, and that's straight up not always plausible - but when your books are marketed with this tea based magic, you need to find a way to carry through! Ning is not a strong enough character to stand without her magic to support her. I missed the competition setting of the first book in hindsight because it forced the book to be creative about the magic system. Without it, it really falls so much flatter.

Wow that ending was both convenient and rushed. I won't say too much to avoid spoilers, but there's one point in which the Big Bad literally shatters ancient relics that are supposed to stop him and seal him away, and then they deadass just reform around the main characters when the Big Bad isn't paying attention. No special reason why. They just do. There's more I could say, but the gist of it is that the ending is incredibly rushed, lowers every stake the book painfully made, and then ends with an epilogue where everything is sunshine and rainbows instead of focusing on the toll taken and the rebuilding of the kingdom at all. Just so terribly disappointing.

Really, what saves this book is that despite everything, the author writes well, and I am generally a fan of mythology based worlds enough to have that carry me, but mileage will vary and all that good stuff. I feel like if the author had just made the first book longer, got rid of the filler of this book, and mashed the two, we wouldn't have needed a duology and it would have made this book's content stronger. Did I hate this book? No. But will I read it again? Probably not.

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