So let me start by saying how much I appreciate reading this now, as compared to then when I read it at 13. This book is definitely for a maturer audience and I am so thankful for my naivety that I didn’t understand the horrible parts of it, because I’d have been disturbed for days. But this is in my opinion a fantastic book and I’m surprised it didn’t have it’s own fan following.

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder was written in 2007. It tells the story of murderer Yelena on the death row who gets a second chance at life by being the poison taster for the Commander of Ixia. Basically she chooses an unexpected death in the future than one at the noose. She trains under the enigmatic Valek, the Commander’s right hand man and from there ensues a gripping story of magic, poisons, adventure and romance. I mean, this book is the full package.

I love almost everything about this book. The language is simple, it’s narrated in first person, from Yelena who is rediscovering a new life after being tortured and then imprisoned for months. She’s narrating life as it passes by her and all the new people she is encountering after her secluded life at the orphanage she lived at prior to the imprisonment.

The plot is extremely gripping. It is a slow build as, Snyder focuses on primarily the world-building before easing into the story and the climax of it. All of it is well thought out and the ends seem to tie together so well that I honestly felt if she had wanted to she could have made it a stand alone novel than a trilogy. The other two books didn’t impress me, and out of the three I adored Poison Study, tolerated Magic Study and skimmed Fire Study.

Snyder introduces a myriad of characters and while she builds some up into ones that come alive around Yelena, I felt a few fell two dimensional. This was okay though, because they play passing roles and so for them to not have been built up the way perhaps Valek and Yelena were, was alright with me. It didn’t take away much from the story. I loved the relationships Yelena develops outside of Valek, especially with Ari and Janco. It was interesting to see the friendships she makes despite being considered a criminal. It shows so much about the character that Snyder has created. The romance was fantastic. By far my favorite part of this book is the romance between Yelena and Valek. It’s so subtle you barely notice it, the story takes precedence, but it rises like a crescendo towards the end and it’s so artfully done from the admiration to the attraction to falling in love. All brilliant.

Poison Study was a four star read for me. And it used to be a five star read for me, but that changed as I’ve grown older. I’ve included why exactly I didn’t like it below but be prepared for a few spoilery details!

I felt the rape scenes were a bit too graphic. I didn’t understand what I was reading at 13, thankfully but even at 17 they made me feel sick. And perhaps that is the intention behind them, but this is a YA fantasy so for the marketed age group it felt too graphic. The representation of a rape survivor is so important, and I wouldn’t have her remove that representation at all, but maybe reduce the graphicness of the scenes and how they were written. My elder sister couldn’t believe this had been penned the way it was in a YA novel and she read this now, at the same time as me.

The age difference between Yelena and Valek really bothered me. It was a 14 year age difference and that was jarring for me while I read the romance so mentally I had to reduce his age to keep the spark alive for me. I don’t enjoy such extravagant age gaps, but once again, it’s something personal.

This year I picked up a few other series by Snyder and (this is my largest complaint more to do with the series than this one book) and I feel like she’s a writer who follows a pattern for her books. The story might differ in detailing but the basic plot remains the same for all her series. For example in the Touch of Power stories it’s about a young Healer who is outlawed and who ends up being taken by a young man to save the Prince of the kingdom. She then falls in love with that man becomes best friends with his two male friends and at the end of the book they are separated. SPOILER – This is basically the outline of Poison Study if you change healer to poisoner and Prince to Commander. It struck me as odd that she would choose to do that. And while it doesn’t effect the series or my rating I thought it was worth mentioning.

But I would definitely read this series. Just the first book is a fantastic ride and worth the time! I just discovered another three books added to the original trilogy and I can’t wait to pick those up! You’ll find me next at the bookstore…

Has anyone ever been in a reading slump that they desperately wish to escape? My go to in such situations are always old books, usually romance and sometimes my old friends, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. But there is one book I turn to in almost every sad slump, when no one is releasing anything good and you end up stuck with trashy dark toxic romances which by the second book always seem to delve into disturbing erotica, is Pride and Prejudice.

I read this book when I was just eleven and was instantly smitten. It’s Jane Austen’s best, I feel, and I’ve read all her works except Mansfield Park. The romance is subtle but it lies steadfast through the entire story, woven through the language, like little flowers to pick up on the way to the end until you carry an entire bouquet of small flowers by the time you flip over the last page.

But now when I’m 17 I look at the story and I find that there are so many small nothings that make it so appealing to me, especially when it’s what I have to compare it to the romance in my reality. Pride and Prejudice is a regency romance, aside from the genre label of ‘classics’, that’s the genre it falls under. The world has changed since then and so has the culture. But one thing I’ve realized, remains the same, the desire for a Mr. Darcy.

Today there are many women who wear an Elizabeth Bennet persona on their sleeves. The sarcastic and witty young woman who places her mind and heart above the silly gossip of society and the nonsensical ticks of her mother. I relate to Eliza Bennet on a personal level, I am her. And that’s not just me being arrogant, I have the results of a Buzzfeed Quiz as proof. But for the most part everyone wants to be an Elizabeth Bennet. But why do we as women fawn over Fitzwilliam Darcy. It’s completely unalike Elizabeth Bennet behaviour and falls more akin to Lydia.

But I think today, where we sort of have to settle for men who are more interested in sex rather than the romance that precedes it and the culture of one-night stands, we desire more. Women don’t want the toxic over-dominating male who wants to spank them if they don’t call them sir or daddy or whatever other words have been messed up for us in the English lexicon, (I’M LOOKING AT YOU FIFTY SHADES OF GREY) (I must be honest – I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey so the chances of me being wrong are high, but I have read wikipedia and I do have friends so I doubt it). Women appreciate a relationship of equals, and that is the beauty of Pride and Prejudice.

Darcy is the ideal male. He’s socially awkward. I think it’s so refreshing to have a male man who probably bathes in money and is of proper breeding (basically has manners) who isn’t the suave guy in the bar who smirks at the girls blushing and stuttering. HE is the stuttering fool, trying to make sense of this strong, opinionated woman who he insulted five minutes ago without knowing. He beats that trope where all men in romance novels are like sexual Gods who need to teach the young virgin the pleasures of her body… like are you for real? That stuff is mythological. Men can be as shy and awkward as women.

But above his personality, it’s the fact that he changes. Look, everyone has their flaws, I mean I’m sarcastic enough to curdle fresh milk and I’m okay with it. Darcy is arrogant and insulting and doesn’t even realize when he’s being so. And so when Elizabeth rejects him that first time he proposes it’s no surprise. I would have done the same. He basically told her she wasn’t pretty enough for a man of his caliber and then went on to say she was the only bearable member of a family that was society’s entertainment and source of gossip (I mean I don’t blame him, Lydia is horrific). And time and time again in fighting his attraction, he puts her down quite rudely, insults her and is just awful.

But after her rejection, Darcy sort of ups his game. When he comes back onto the playing field for Eliza’s hand you can tell the man has done some serious introspection. He’s made a genuine effort to change not his personality but his behaviourisms that came across to Eliza as obnoxious and arrogant and elitist. He remains the man who doesn’t like to dance and thinks that poetry feeds love and he never once changes the standard of a fine woman, he just includes Elizabeth to be a part of that standard. What he does change is the way he talks to Eliza, and her family as evidenced by the Gardeners. He makes that effort. He introspects. That is the charm of Mr. Darcy.

In times like today we are surrounded by Mr. Wickham’s and Mr. Collins’s and I daresay (for after all, I am a feminist) many obnoxious beings like Lydia. But this romance between Eliza and Mr. Darcy remains evergreen, for it is wrought with the hope that we are the ideals for men like Darcy. We need only wait. But being the cynic I am, I suppose we are all Ms. Lucas’s bound to be stuck with obnoxious men like Mr. Collins. Alas! What a tragedy!

War is always the worst on the women. That’s what they say. They face the brunt of it. The loss is primarily theirs. The treatment afterwards is primarily theirs with the threat of rape and capture looming over their heads. War is always the worst for the women even when they aren’t at the frontline, that’s what I’ve been told, and before I read this book in 2012 I couldn’t understand it. And then I did.

Chitra Banerjee’s most famous book – The Palace of Illusions, follows Draupadi through the Mahabharata. Her role in it and how the ways of the world seem to malign the female sex, in those times and even now. It is a literary masterpiece and in a hundred years will probably be considered a classic of English literature.

There are so many things in this book that as women, and more than that, as Indian women, we need to reflect on. And as people, the many truths that are brought about by the story penned in this book are some thing we should think about. It follows Draupadi from that moment she is born to the moment of her death. It starts from the moment she steps out of the fires and is rejected by her father, because he didn’t want her and how that rejection stays with her for years to come. So much so that she doesn’t like being named as the daughter of Drupad but prefers to be called Panchaali, the daughter of Panchaal. I think much of the initial rejection from her father shapes Draupadi’s personality. She’s a prickly, intelligent girl who grows into a headstrong and stubborn woman. And no one ever seems to want that. It’s the typical Indian male attitude (I know not all men are the same, but were you to do a survey of all of India’s men, you’d find most men are of the mindset featured in this novel), they all want the demure woman who will smile shyly at them, swoon over their muscles, women who cook and clean and every night invite them to bed with a wink and a smile. But Draupadi isn’t that. She’s curious and she wants more than being just a wife. She wants to be a queen and often the implicit effect of this was that her husbands found her tiring and sort of insufferable. They all married once more despite having the most beautiful woman in the world in their arms.

Women have been treated like objects since time immemorial and I’ve noticed it’s a trend in Indian mythology. From the Treta Yug where Rama feels it is alright to discard Sita like she is old goods to the Dwapara Yug where Draupadi is asked to sit naked on Duryodhan’s bare thigh because she was gambled away. It has set a tone for how women are treated today. That they can be sold into prostitution, suspected of being sluts or cheaters when they are not or when they enjoy sex as much as men. It comes across today because of the way it’s been set down in our literature. In Hindi and Urdu and all kinds of religious writings from the myriad that exist in the subcontinent. We take away from this, and we apply it today, and no matter how much we try and change there are those who will continue to follow the ancient wrongs that have been prescribed.

In this world that Banerjee has built, all the decisions that the women are faced with are based on the men they surround themselves with and Draupadi tries so hard to fight against it, but it suppressed so often, a struggle turns into more of a battle. She chooses to turn away the man she falls in love with because of the intolerances of her brother. She chooses to marry five men instead of one because she doesn’t want to offend the sensibilities of the mother of her future husband and risk the disgrace. She isn’t allowed to turn away the Kauravas when they come to her home resulting in the destruction of the life she built. She isn’t able to turn away the evil pursuit of Duryodhan nor turn away the penalty of a fourteen year stint in the forest. And at the end of this terribly hard life she is abhorred by the men in her life for bringing about the destruction of the kingdom with her ‘zidd‘ of vengeance. If a man were to insist on vengeance the world around him would applaud his honor, his bravery. But when a woman does it, she is called stubborn and unreasonable.

But this is old news. When I was ten my school librarian gave me an off limits reference retelling of the Mahabharata that brought all of this to my mind with a glaring sadness. And so for me it was old news. For me what stuck was how decimating war can be. For the men, but mostly for the women. It is unbelievably difficult for the men who fight on the frontline. They are faced with the trauma of death and the bloodshed that coats their palms like a slick sheen of sweat. But in a book when they are but five surviving fighters, your attention turns to the women. The women left behind an army of thousands. Death is finite. Loss and grief seem to stretch on endlessly. Mothers grieve for the sons who they have raised. Wives grieve for the loss of love and for the children who have lost fathers. Sisters mourn the brothers who have protected them before their husbands did. Daughters cry for the fathers who no longer hold their hand over their hair. Death seems to come far more quickly on the battlefield than it does for women who face such irreparable loss. A death that claims them slowly as loss feasts upon them bit by bit. It is an unthinkable pain. And that is the focus of the book. The women who are left behind in the wake of such devastating loss that war brings about.

The five Pandava’s show an inordinate enthusiasm for the Kurukshetra war, as do the Kauravas. Each faction looking for glory and for a crown. They boast of finally being able to kill the enemies who have thwarted them, one of those being Karna. But rarely does anyone looking at the women who sit at home. The women who bless for glory but pray for their men to come home. It is the fear of loss and then the inevitable loss that everyone ignores. Death comes once, while loss lives on. And this is the masterpiece that Banerjee manages to bring forth with this book. She brings forth this acute sense of loss that women face as a major theme while never once diminishing the bravery and pain felt by the men on the battlefield. For once the two sexes are portrayed as equals in what they lose.

The language used is simple and tell the story in the voice of Draupadi. The story flows effortlessly weaving in the different women of the Mahabharata from Kunti, to Uttara to Ahilya, to Madri. They all portray the strength and the power that is found in womanhood.

What does the Palace of Illusions teach me? Aside from fighting the patriarchy? It taught me in many ways what it means to be a woman – the ability to bear inexplicable pain, to bear loss, to bear suppression and come out stronger than anybody else could. To be a woman in this world, is to endure.

As my junior year of high school comes to a close, so does studying this novel. The year started with the horror stories surrounding the dreaded prescribed reading – “The Shadow Lines” by Amitav Ghosh originally published in 1988. I was all prepared to hate it, and pleasantly surprised when I didn’t. I loved it. The Catcher in The Rye was worse, in fact, I quite despised it. But this novel has quickly become a favourite, I’m sure I’ll be able to turn to often.

“PEOPLE LIKE MY GRANDMOTHER, WHO HAVE NO HOME BUT IN MEMORY, LEARN TO BE VERY SKILLED IN THE ART OF RECOLLECTION.”

~~ The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh

The Shadow Lines is a tough read. It took me many days to get through it, but perhaps that’s because of my preconceived notion that I wouldn’t like it anyway. Set in the 1960s and early 1970’s the book is split into two halves. Going Away and Coming Home. The narrative is a masterpiece as Ghosh weaves through all boundaries of time, place and existence. Focusing on the lives of those disrupted by the war between India and the two Pakistans and the long term effects of the lives of those involved.

The writing jumps from one setting to another in quick succession weaving through different events in the narrators mind before getting back to the original event he was narrating. It feels like wading through a swamp of thoughts and anecdotes. The language flows so effortlessly from one incident into another. It is literary pleasure to read through the book.

More than just a story The Shadow Lines comments on so many aspects of life and war that are so poignantly honest. The ideas that Ghosh puts forward don’t hit you until the end when you realize how the story has finished. He is weaving a tapestry of words, and only once it’s finished do you see the glimmer and gold amongst the grit of the story. You’re pulled into this world that traverses all boundaries. All boundaries are reduced to simple shadows. Shadow Lines.

Ghosh uses this masterpiece of a novel to comment on the idea of what Indian parents accept of their children. He uses Trideb to comment on the idea of what we as Indians expect from our children and how hugely disproportionate our disappointment is when they fail to meet these expectations.

One of the most heartbreakingly beautiful scenes I’ve ever read is the one Ghosh writes regarding casualties of war. They are reduced to names and numbers at the border. It’s something to ponder over. The idea of loss, loss of loved ones, loss of memory, loss of innocence is so acutely portrayed as the narrator grows with a tragedy that has been dipped in the murky waters of time, until it has been so distorted it is incomprehensible. The idea of cartography and casualties and how mundane they seem to us, and how little they impact us, until it is someone in the little bubble that surrounds us that is reduced to a number in black and white on the gritty inked daily paper.

I think the part I loved the most was how Ghosh teaches the reader to travel within one’s mind. For me books have always been a way to escape reality. But it’s been a new experience for me to travel and build up an entire city within the corners of my mind the way the narrator learns to. It opened up an entire new way of travel for me, which while not as enriching as walking the streets of a new city, teaches one how to navigate through new places, everyday of life. It taught me the art of recreation, using words more completely.

The Shadow Lines is tough to read and yet the story that comes across is a tragedy that is so beautiful and encompasses those aspects of life that when faced with, we flinch at. It is the revelations that we refuse to look at that make this book so perfect. It has been my favourite read of 2016…

So I’ve put off reading this book for years. It’s on all the window displays at bookstores and every year when the next book in the series has been released it comes back to the deals section with the bright yellow ‘buy 2 get 1 free’ sticker stuck to the lovely cover. But there are two reasons I refrained from reading it. First, that Cinderella has never been of much appeal to me. I’m an ardent romance lover, but the idea of insta-love is just unappealing. it’s my least favourite book trope, and the idea of a man marrying the woman who fit the glass slipper she left behind at his party is a bit out there, even for the Brothers Grimm. And second I’ve never been really interested in the idea of a cyborg based fantasy, not a fan of the robot uprising story. So in general this is not what I’d really go for. Cinderella – yugh. Cyborgs – eh. But Marissa Meyer does not disappoint at all.

Cinder was such a fun read! It didn’t meet any expectations I had and proved any apprehensions I had, wrong.

The world-building is so interesting! Meyer had to reconstruct the entire world in a futuristic setting. She’s moved forward enough in time that there have now been a total of four world wars rather than just two. Monarchies have been reinstated, and jurisdictions geographically have become far wider, seeming to encompass whole continents. Cyborgs aren’t just robots in this new world, but actual humans with severely cool bionic limbs and inner systems. The moon is now colonised by a race of earthen who have the power to manipulate bio-electricity. So Meyer has packed in a lot into her world.

With such intense world-building, one would assume that the book falls into heavy descriptive sequences, letting the story fall short, but Meyer has woven in all the elements through the plotline so it reads smoothly and isn’t just a dump of information. The language is simple which actually works in Meyer’s favour because it reads like a fairytale retelling. Its fluid and the story flows from scene to scene really well.

I really enjoyed Cinder and Kai’s romance. It was so cute, especially because Kai refused to give up on her until the very end when parts of her character were revealed. I really liked their chemistry and their interactions, giving insight into both of their characters. I’m hoping the future books pick up on their story!

I can’t wait to read Scarlet! In a way, I’m glad I put off reading this for so long because now I can binge read the entire series in a go. Waiting is the worst curse when you find a fantastic book series!