When the tilted emptiness that has settled inside Soraya begins to fade, replaced by stubborn determination, I wanted-abruptly and with an absurd intensity-for her to kindle it, to shield and nurture that flame until it takes far more than a single breath to blow it out. A kind of awful pleasure sliced through Soraya at the realization that she’s far more powerful than she’s ever given herself credit for, a question winding around her like a rope: “What would she allow herself to become?” The helpless girl, locked away and withering on the vine of life? The quiescent serpent, ignoring the coiled thing inside her, that gathering of something hard and unyielding? Or the girl made of thorns as long as spears and as sharp as needs, with a sting like fire? It bloomed power in her blood, and made her something more than human. She was shot through with that dark, smoky core of poison, and it sung in her. There’s a suggestion of a trapdoor waiting under every page, and the possibilities bristled in my thoughts. The novel is heavy on the foreshadowing: the story often feels like a clock winding tighter as the ending draws near, and the world-though only delicately sketched since the author does not explain or engage with every aspect of its nature-is sharpened with urgency. The premise promises a story that bears the indentations of a dark and twisted fairytale with all the rich density of horror, a tale that gathers Persian mythology into an exhilarating antiheroic slant, a world where the truth of who is right or wrong is as cold and unreachable as the stars-and the potential is definitely there. Parvaneh might be the only one who can show Soraya the gaps between the bars of her curse, but to escape her life, Soraya might have to tear a hole in her family’s. Until Azad, a handsome young soldier captures a female div named Parvaneh, and all the hope Soraya had shut out comes roaring back in. But it was a familiar feeling: the nagging sense that she was teetering on a knife’s edge, and all it would take was one push in the wrong direction and she would surrender to the deepest pull of the darkness that prowled inside her.įor years, Soraya has walked the edges of her curse, looking for a crack, but it held on. She felt it in her poisonous blood, an iron weight she had borne for so long. Soraya knows fear in the shape of her own face. The story of the Shah’s twin sister came to the people of Atashar as most rumors do, as a drifting set of jokes and have-you-heards that combined and recombined themselves slowly into a single tale: a poisonous girl with the blood of a div moving in her veins, a burden to her family, living in the shadows, cursed and reviled.īut unlike most rumors, this one is true. She felt it in her poisonous blood, an ✧ find this review & others on my blog ✧ But unlike most rumors, this one is true. ✧ find this review & others on my blog ✧ The story of the Shah’s twin sister came to the people of Atashar as most rumors do, as a drifting set of jokes and have-you-heards that combined and recombined themselves slowly into a single tale: a poisonous girl with the blood of a div moving in her veins, a burden to her family, living in the shadows, cursed and reviled. Soraya thought she knew her place in the world, but when her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, she begins to question who she is and who she is becoming.human or demon. And above is a young man who isn’t afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds knowledge that she craves, the answer to her freedom. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it’s not just a story.Īs the day of her twin brother’s wedding approaches, Soraya must decide if she’s willing to step outside of the shadows for the first time. There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. A captivating and utterly original fairy tale about a girl cursed to be poisonous to the touch, and who discovers what power might lie in such a curse. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it’s not just a story.
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