Lady of poison

One star for the plot.

First things first - this book is badly named. Lady of Poison? I expected to read large sections from the perspectives of a faithful of Talona, but instead I read from the perspective a dungeon master watching his players play through an adventure against the Chosen of Talona. Almost felt like observing an RPG session, the way the situations and fights flow. There's interesting bits of realms lore thrown in, but it felt like reading from an RPG sourcebook.

The 4 main characters had potential, but are marred by poor exposition, inconsistent behaviour, and downright unrealistic and corny dialogue. Marrec had a great backstory - but it felt forced and little came out of it. Priestly perspective? Mostly whining about his lost connection to his goddess - the way he regained it was too convenient. His mysterious pal from the far south? Yeah, that's about it. The shallow elf that's very unlike an elf. The wizard with a bitterness issue seemingly for the sake of it. Very one-dimensional characters that suddenly go out of character just to force a situation.

The villains were impressed upon the reader as being extremely dangerous - yet they were dispatched easily. You just can't empathise with the tribulations of the protagonists when their foes seem so weak.

And don't get me started on the dialogue. Every few paragraphs, one of them will say something that totally throws out what little immersion that I get. And as seen in my other reviews, I get irritated at bad editing and proofreading - and there's plenty here.

To be fair, the overarching plot is actually interesting. But I just can't help feeling that it was roundly wasted by shallow and inconsistent characters, poor interaction, convenient situations, and bad proofreading. I was thinking 2 stars, but I couldn't quite bring myself to label it as “It was ok”. Hope the other 3 in the series are better.