On 30 Apr, 07:12, Aaron Bergman <aberg...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> _Fire Study_, Maria V. Snyder
>
> This series, starting with the amicable _Poison Study_ and forgettable
> _Magic Study_ seems to have moved to large trim paperback in the romance
> section of the bookstore. This book was an improvement on _Magic Study_,
> but there's just not much here -- the bad people are bad, the good
> people are good, and there's not much else going on. Whatever attracted
> me to _Poison Study_ has not stayed with this series.
_Poison Study_ itself didn't really grab me. None of the characters
came alive, the plot wasn't enough to make up for the characters, and
the setting wasn't enough to make up for the plot. Plus lesser
annoyances like clumsy infodumping in the early chapters, the blatant
foreshadowing of the romance, and an unlikely scene that exists to
show the military dictator being kind to a small child.
The other thing that bothered me was that the phrase "Stockholm
Syndrome" kept flitting across my mind - Yelena identifies rather
easily with a regime that's thrown her in a dungeon and given her a
choice between execution and a possible slow and painful death as a
food taster.
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