
Yelena is a survivor. Kidnapped as a child, held prisoner as a teen, then released to act as a poison taster, she is now a student of magic. But these magic skills place her in imminent danger, and with an execution order on her head, she has no choice but to escape to Sitia, the land of birth. But nothing in Sitia is familiar. As she struggles to understand where she belongs and how to control her powers, a rogue magician emerges – and Yelena catches his eye. Suddenly she is embroiled in a situation not of her making. And once again her magical abilities will either save her life… or be her downfall.
To be really honest, I like the cover of the first book better. I like this one too, but something about it just makes me like it less then the first book. On the other hand, what I’m really happy about is two things. One: it matches the first book perfectly. Cover changes are one of my biggest pet peeves. Two: it is another recognisable scene from the book. I love it when you can see and recognise a certain scene from the book on the cover. I like it more then just some random face on the book, which by the way reminds me that there is another thing that I really like about these covers: there is room to imagine. You can see the backside of Yelena, see the colour of her hair and the shape of her body but not her face. You can imagine that yourself and that to me is always a reason why I prefer reading a book before watching the movie/TV-show.
The plot of this book was good but even better then that: it was mostly interesting. Yelena is moving form Ixia to Sitia and there is this whole new country to explore for Yelena and the reader. There are so many differences between Sitia and Ixia. Magic, clothes, food, culture, government and so much more. I loved learning where Yelena really came from, even though she couldn’t remember it herself. It was great to discover it with her together. But I must also honestly say: I didn’t like Magic Study as much as Poison study. Why? Two reasons: first of all the tension. In Poison Study there is a constant tension with the poison tasting and the enemies of Yelena who are always behind some corner. I somewhat missed that in this book until the antagonist revealed himself. From that point on there was enough tension because I consider him to be even worse then the antagonist from Poison Study. He is probably one of the scariest antagonists I have ever read about. He gave me goosebumps, literally, and I feel so bad for all his victims. But to me all this tension started out a little bit to late. Another thing that I really missed in this book were two characters: Ari and Janco. They gave Poison Study a lot of humour and action and while there was enough action in this book it felt like sometimes it really needed some Ari and Janco humour. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that Magic Study is a worthy follow up in this series.
Because the characters in this book are so good, just like they were in Poison Study. All the old ones were still amazing, I loved to see them again but what I loved even more was getting to know all the new characters like Yelena’s family. I found them all very charming and funny and they left a huge impression on me. Essau is very sweet and relaxed, Perl is sweet and caring (a bit to much sometimes) and Leif… Well Leif is just very awesome and cool (and a bit of a grumpy pain in the ass sometimes). And I can’t forget Cahill and his men. I wished we could have got to know them better in the book, just knowing a little bit more about what happened with them when they travelled to Sitia would have been really nice and interesting I think. And another group that I must name are the other master magicians beside Irys. They are all so different: their personality, their powers, the way they see things, the way they treat Yelena. So interesting to see how they rule Sitia together. And then there is also Tula, poor Tula, and strong Opal. I literally can keep going on and on and on about all these new characters, I loved them a whole lot.
There is a lot going on in Magic Study. A lot is found out and even more questions arise. Now lets see how it all ends in Fire Study.




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