Yelena in particular is fully established within Poison Study, her past and motivations revealed in tantalizing drips as we move through her present day narrative. Yelena and Opal are interesting and flawed female heroes, and the individuals who surround them are not two dimensional stereotypes – they are given enough character to overcome any stereotypical associations which might be drawn from their positions in the women’s lives. Snyder’s greatest strength is her character creation. However, while this is all interesting from an academic point of view, it is the characters which keep you reading. Through each country Snyder exposes faults and problems, and leaves you with the uncomfortable question of whether any method of governance is adequate for the instance when one person decides that they want to abuse the power they have attained.
The other is run by a selection of clan based councilmen and magicians. One is an apparently benevolent military dictatorship, run by a strict code of conduct, where everyone has to wear uniforms which dictate their position within society. Snyder takes plenty of time establishing Ixia, and its opposite in many ways, the country of Sitia. What follows over the course of these novels is an interesting interrogation of power and governance, hidden underneath the surface narrative of magic and assassination. She has admitted to murdering her benefactor, and is ready to accept her fate, when she is offered a short reprieve in the form of becoming the food taster for the ruler of her kingdom, Ixia.
Poison Study starts with an intriguing premise – Yelena is in prison and scheduled for execution. The Chronicles of Ixia are comprised of three trilogies, starting with the Study Series which focuses on Yelena Zaltana, The Glass Series which turns its attention to Opal Cowan, a character introduced in The Study Series, before returning to Yelena nine years after the events of the first novel in the final triology. It wasn’t until recently (almost six years later) that I returned to the world created by Snyder, discovering the two sequel trilogies that she had published in the intervening years. Bought during my fantasy obsessed pre-university period, I consumed the book and its two sequels with vigour, entrapped in the world that Snyder created. It was a fair few years since I first found Poison Study by Maria V Snyder.
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