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3.39 AVERAGE
3.39 AVERAGE
Thanks to NetGalley for the arc!
Master of Poisons is an epic fantasy where the world needs saving – not from some Dark Lord, but from people who are good but weak, and those who are strong but corrupt. The world is being consumed by poison storms, land and rivers ruined more and more every day, and if something isn’t done…
You might expect this, then, to be some kind of preachy environmentalist book. It’s not. Environmentalism is a huge theme – climate change is literally the Big Bad – but Master of Poisons is a big, beautiful fantasy, with magic and mountains, pirates and politics, questions and the quests undertaken to answer them. Djola, the only one on the Emperor’s council advocating for deep and long-term change as a solution to the poisoned land, is exiled for not having easy answers to give. Awa, a young woman who discovers she can travel to the wondrous otherworld called Smokeland, is sold by her father – and raised by Green Elders, a society of wandering bands who live outside of normal life, keeping the old ways alive and weaving new ones for the future.
And then things get complicated.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
Master of Poisons is an epic fantasy where the world needs saving – not from some Dark Lord, but from people who are good but weak, and those who are strong but corrupt. The world is being consumed by poison storms, land and rivers ruined more and more every day, and if something isn’t done…
You might expect this, then, to be some kind of preachy environmentalist book. It’s not. Environmentalism is a huge theme – climate change is literally the Big Bad – but Master of Poisons is a big, beautiful fantasy, with magic and mountains, pirates and politics, questions and the quests undertaken to answer them. Djola, the only one on the Emperor’s council advocating for deep and long-term change as a solution to the poisoned land, is exiled for not having easy answers to give. Awa, a young woman who discovers she can travel to the wondrous otherworld called Smokeland, is sold by her father – and raised by Green Elders, a society of wandering bands who live outside of normal life, keeping the old ways alive and weaving new ones for the future.
And then things get complicated.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
This just wasn't for me. It was a lot of world building and I just couldn't keep up. However if you're a high fantasy fan you might like this! It was just a tough way to try and get into the genre.
challenging
reflective
adventurous
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I don’t like I understood 80% of this book. It throws you right in and never acquiesces. If you thought A Spear Cuts Through Water’s writing style was confusing, this book’s narrative style & language will be even more challenging. I found it difficult to follow, hard to connect to, and slow to engage.
At a bird’s eye view, the story is complex and relevant, steeped in culture with a horde of unique characters. But up close, I feel the author leans too much on exaggerated prose. If I thought hard enough, I could extrapolate this book into modern themes while I was reading, but the writing style blocked those connections more than it fostered them.
The characters are hard to love, mostly because I think they are a true representation of the internal battles one wages when faced with the crushing realities of oppressive governments and the impacts of climate change. Djola and Awa would go back and forth within a few sentences about what they believed, therefore became difficult to pin down and trust.
I’m walking away from this book still confused and not connected to the characters, but I feel like I understand the author’s mission and I appreciate the gravity of a novel like this.
At a bird’s eye view, the story is complex and relevant, steeped in culture with a horde of unique characters. But up close, I feel the author leans too much on exaggerated prose. If I thought hard enough, I could extrapolate this book into modern themes while I was reading, but the writing style blocked those connections more than it fostered them.
The characters are hard to love, mostly because I think they are a true representation of the internal battles one wages when faced with the crushing realities of oppressive governments and the impacts of climate change. Djola and Awa would go back and forth within a few sentences about what they believed, therefore became difficult to pin down and trust.
I’m walking away from this book still confused and not connected to the characters, but I feel like I understand the author’s mission and I appreciate the gravity of a novel like this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Misogyny, Rape, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Colonisation, War, Classism
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
reflective
slow-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
I liked this way better than I liked [book:The Priory of the Orange Tree|40275288], and I didn't like Priory that much. In terms of fiction/fantasy epic, Master of Poisons takes the cake. The language, the journeys, the characters, the characters' journeys, they're on a different metaphysical plane.
Rooted in African folklore and tradition, two good-hearted people connected through smoke and desert are destined to find the cure for the encroaching poison desert and parasitic spirit slaves in haunting the afterlife. One is the Master of Poisons, one is a Garden Sprite. Both want to be be the griot who tells the story of how the world changed.
Only a large amount of words can describe a great epic, at the real risk of ruining the intrigue and fun for everyone. Most notably for this book is the writing style, the abundance of metaphor and allegory at times head-scratching and others so spiritually heartfelt that onwards continuation in the story is the only logical thing to do.
Master of Poisons doesn't start off immediately drawing everyone in, nor does it spend a lot of time setting up the setting and action. Learn <I>in media res</I> like the classic [book:The Iliad|77265004]. Learn the characters and geopolitical constraints through osmosis rather than narration. The story doesn't stick in my head, it drifts away like smoke and I've been using symbolism and relation to The Fool's Journey in tarot to reflect on the plot's rises and falls.
The time passage is marked; not obvious, but marked by age and growth. Travel is across the seas to the floating cities on a pirate ship or raids off the mainland's coast. Or it is being transported as a product of human trafficking. And also through the heartlands or spiritual plane nicknamed the Smokeland. Travel is all over the place, but that doesn't detract from character growth and development. It's hard to criticize one particular character, I could only watch from above or from the side as they try to prevent the fall of the Empire and the fall of their civilization due to spirit debt and void spells feeding the expansion of the poison desert.
Over time the story makes sense, and the characters are known. Each character has a flaw, there's no perfect character to fully love, and there's hardly a character to fully hate too.
In the mood for an epic African epic, pick this book up.
Rooted in African folklore and tradition, two good-hearted people connected through smoke and desert are destined to find the cure for the encroaching poison desert and parasitic spirit slaves in haunting the afterlife. One is the Master of Poisons, one is a Garden Sprite. Both want to be be the griot who tells the story of how the world changed.
Only a large amount of words can describe a great epic, at the real risk of ruining the intrigue and fun for everyone. Most notably for this book is the writing style, the abundance of metaphor and allegory at times head-scratching and others so spiritually heartfelt that onwards continuation in the story is the only logical thing to do.
Master of Poisons doesn't start off immediately drawing everyone in, nor does it spend a lot of time setting up the setting and action. Learn <I>in media res</I> like the classic [book:The Iliad|77265004]. Learn the characters and geopolitical constraints through osmosis rather than narration. The story doesn't stick in my head, it drifts away like smoke and I've been using symbolism and relation to The Fool's Journey in tarot to reflect on the plot's rises and falls.
The time passage is marked; not obvious, but marked by age and growth. Travel is across the seas to the floating cities on a pirate ship or raids off the mainland's coast. Or it is being transported as a product of human trafficking. And also through the heartlands or spiritual plane nicknamed the Smokeland. Travel is all over the place, but that doesn't detract from character growth and development. It's hard to criticize one particular character, I could only watch from above or from the side as they try to prevent the fall of the Empire and the fall of their civilization due to spirit debt and void spells feeding the expansion of the poison desert.
Over time the story makes sense, and the characters are known. Each character has a flaw, there's no perfect character to fully love, and there's hardly a character to fully hate too.
In the mood for an epic African epic, pick this book up.
A beautiful, if confusing, African-inspired fantasy
In a fantasy Africa facing ecological devastation, climate change, and social collapse, a minister to the emperor, Djola, called "Master of Poisons" for knowing the antidotes of all poisons and cured for all ills, is tasked by the emperor Azizi with finding the cure for the world - and banished until he does. Awa is a Sprite, or an acolyte of the Green Elders, who have much wisdom, but are social outcasts for their refusal to conform to the ways of many others (including the fact that many of them are a genderfluid type called "veson" with their own pronoun, "vie") - Awa may hold the key that Ebola seeks. Others try to exploit the situation, or grasp at illusions rather than true solutions, and prefer to ignore that their own decisions and lifestyles contribute to the changing climate and ecological devastation (which also has a spiritual component - spiritual devastation, if you will). Anyway, much of the book is somewhat hard to follow, and the way the story is told, it is not always clear exactly what is going on, but if you can embrace the uncertainty, it is a beautiful world and beautiful writing.
In a fantasy Africa facing ecological devastation, climate change, and social collapse, a minister to the emperor, Djola, called "Master of Poisons" for knowing the antidotes of all poisons and cured for all ills, is tasked by the emperor Azizi with finding the cure for the world - and banished until he does. Awa is a Sprite, or an acolyte of the Green Elders, who have much wisdom, but are social outcasts for their refusal to conform to the ways of many others (including the fact that many of them are a genderfluid type called "veson" with their own pronoun, "vie") - Awa may hold the key that Ebola seeks. Others try to exploit the situation, or grasp at illusions rather than true solutions, and prefer to ignore that their own decisions and lifestyles contribute to the changing climate and ecological devastation (which also has a spiritual component - spiritual devastation, if you will). Anyway, much of the book is somewhat hard to follow, and the way the story is told, it is not always clear exactly what is going on, but if you can embrace the uncertainty, it is a beautiful world and beautiful writing.
One of those books that the idea sounded really neat, but I just couldn't get into it. Gave it a few tries, then moved on.
