Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Poison Study

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder

7 reviews

moobell55's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.75

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spaghettii's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.75

I could not put this book down! I had a hard time predicting a lot of the book, which was a nice change.

I knew Rand was going to betray her at some point because of how Valek described him, but wow. I like that despite being portrayed as the bad guy there was still depth to the chatacter.

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maevebillings's review

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adventurous dark emotional fast-paced

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

4.5

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itsnotalakeitsanocean's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been added but I guess I'll do a quick rundown of what I did and didn't like of the book.

What I liked

The castle staff felt believable and you could really get a sense of both their overall dynamic serving the Commander and their individual dynamics within their colleague groups. It really helped set up a lot of the intrigue that came later as Yelena navigated her new life.
I was always excited to see what Yelena would do next or what she was planning. I also liked seeing her reflect on how far she'd come and survived at the end of the book.
I liked the fact that
the Commander was transgender and although he had inner conflict stemming from the fact he could be potentially outed, it was not presented as a negative and I thought it was sweet the way Yelena helped him through his inner dysphoria. I think the way he was initially described could have been avoided to have less gender essentialism to it, I think the inclusion of a transgender character was a pleasant surprise.
I really liked the plot twist with the
Criollo. The way it was seemingly benign only for its true horrific potential to be revealed later was good.

What I didn't like

Valek reciprocating Yelena's feelings came out of nowhere for me. And the same could be said for the random sex scene towards the end of the book (because clearly nothing screams sexier than sex in a cold dank rat-infested dungeon).
The villains weren't particularly strong characters and felt like they were cut from the same cloth of evil.
Mogkam especially felt like a stereotypical evil magical advisor to his boss, as if he did what he did just for the sake of being evil instead of having a clear reason
.
One of the side characters, Rand, seems to get left by the wayside after he died - which felt disproportionate to how much a part of Yelena's life in good and bad ways.