Wooding, Chris: Poison
Poison
Writer: Chris Wooding
Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy
Pages: 273
Finally got around to reading my last dare for 2007. I wasn't sure what to make of this one at first glance. Not a huge fan of the cover, but like my reaction to Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, I liked the cover a lot better once I'd read the book and could see just how perfectly the cover fit. Plus, it's a lot nicer in person than online, cause there's all kinds of cool texture stuff going on with it.
At the start, this book reminded me of Naomi Mitchison's Travel Light. I can't pinpoint why: I think it has something to do with the use of language, and then of course, there's the fact that Poison is a YA fantasy with a female lead.
And speaking of female leads, the character Poison reminds me--and take this with a grain of salt, since I haven't read Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass in four years and I haven't read the rest of the trilogy so I'm really basing this comparison on the movie--of Lyra. She's plucky, contrary, and headstrong. She'll do whatever it takes to get what she wants, and in the case of Poison, it's rescuing her baby sister from phaeries. It sounds like a simple fantasy, and on the surface, it is, but once you get reading, it becomes so, so much more than that.
Spoilers behind the cut.
There's so much that's enchanting about this book. I'm at a cross between gushing and dissecting, so I'll try to keep this coherent.
The settings come and go, and I think the most realized and fascinating setting is that of the Black Marshes. I could so easily picture the location, and the details that went into daily life in this locale were simply awesome, stuff I would've never thought of without some serious prompting.
The House of the Bone Witch was also a spectacular setting, if not for the details, which were good, but for the atmosphere and mood. Very creepy, and given the length of time spent there, it's played just right.
The cast is also very strong: we've got Poison, our heroine who named herself so at 14 because her stepmother hated her so much, and then the supporting cast of Bram, who's endearing while realistic, Peppercorn, who'd get on your nerves if not for her pure innocence, and of course, Andersen, who of course wins the award for my favorite character in the book, simply for being the intelligent cat that he is.
But what really wins in this book is the story itself and the ideas fueling it. If this book weren't a YA, I could easily see some fantasy author stretching this out into some 500 page monstrosity, and I'm so used to such things in epic fantasy that I kept expecting the tale to spin out new threads in the plot. Actually, everything is quite tight: we're introduced to story elements as necessary, and when Poison has a task, she completes it to some degree of success (always relying on her wits rather than any kind of magical power, which was refreshing) and the completion of said task brings her closer to her goal in some cases, and in others not. I really liked that humans were the despised race of the Realms, though I'm not sure how original that is, simply because stereotypically, elves (and by extension, phaeries) tend to look down on humans anyway, so that wasn't a stretch.
But I loved how the truth behind the story was always dawning on me right before the revelations occurred. I suspected that Poison was meant to be the next Hierophant, though I never suspected that she, like everyone around her, was part of a story of his own making. The concept of "god" being a writer and we characters in his/her/its story has always been appealing to me, so the fact that this idea fueled the climax of the book was a thrill. I loved how the world began to unravel when Poison tried to interfere with her destiny, but I loved how she discovered that short of dying, she could make her own choices, even though she was wired to choose the way she did. It might boggle some people, the idea that predestination and free will can coexist, but it makes perfect sense in my mind, and I like how Woodring handles it in the book.
I also loved how this isn't exactly a happy ending. Poison doesn't get her sister back. In fact, had she chickened out and gone home with the girl, she would've had her sister back all along, without needing to go on the quest. It's a bittersweet realization, but a good one, and it's easy to see where a sequel could be written through the POV of the sister, if it hasn't already been done.
There's much to love about this novel. It sucks you in and makes you think, especially at the end with all its questions of free will versus predestination and what it means to truly make choices. The fact that the characters have to rely on wit rather than magic is appealing, especially in a magical world, and while the setting Wooding creates has plenty of blacks and whites, there's plenty of grey seeping through the cracks, especially where Poison is concerned.
It's a book I'd easily recommend to anyone who enjoys YA fiction, particularly those interested in epic fantasy with a female lead (and epic fantasy that doesn't have to be a door-stopper). Wooding has definitely earned a place on my "will-read-more-of" list, so it'll be fun to see what else he's done.
Next up: The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold