Wow. This story/book is very hard to describe - it must be lived, relished, savored, endured and believed. Beautiful and harsh imagery, moving tale, "real" heroes. ♥️♥️♥️ ( )

DNF at 15%. This is simply too hard to read in 2020. Climate disaster, a council of self-interested “leaders” who only want to keep their power and enrich themselves, prejudice ... ugh. It seems really well done and there are some deeply resonant parts, like those with the elephants, the way one MC speaks to and of his wife, the ways that queerness is woven into the fabric of this world. It’s just really difficult to read a climate disaster when we’re dealing with climate disaster, a pandemic, white nationalism and the greed that makes all of that worse. Readers looking for complicated political maneuvering and world-building, magic and two narrators who at first seem to have nothing in common will find a lot to like.

I have always enjoyed reading epic fantasy. I love to look into an author’s world that they completely made up, and be awed and inspired by it. Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston did have a very rich world that was highly detailed. It was a world mixed with violence and beauty. You can tell that Hairston put her heart and soul into her world and for that, this book was excellent.

Now in every epic fantasy you have names of people and places that you won’t be familiar with, and sometimes it does take a bit for the flow to get going and for the reader to catch on. I expect that and it’s part of what makes a fantasy novel so interesting. But when you add in lots of unfamiliar words for things too, it becomes a lot harder for me to find my flow. If some of the things would have been explained faster this could have helped me to understand better. And when things were explained it was more of an information dump instead of having it flow seamlessly into the story.

Often short chapters are used to keep the action going and this makes the reader want to keep turning the pages to find out what will happen next. But the short chapters in Master of Poisons had more of a choppy effect, often taking me out of the story. There were times when more was needed to be said before jumping to something else.

Even though I couldn’t get into Master of Poisons like I was hoping, I’m not going to say you shouldn’t read it, since it might be something you really end up enjoying. ( )

BEES ( )