Very well written, no doubt about it, but lacking in action. Like many a start to a trilogy, this book is mostly setting up, and fine characterisation, which be in no doubt I enjoyed, but I'm a teacher Librarian, and I read with the taste of the average YA reader in mind, and I fear this is a little too lacking in action to appeal to any but the most literate of my charges.
A fine author with a lovely style, but unfortunately nothing very much happens in this book, though I did find myself interested in getting to the bottom of the mystery of what 'the machine' is, and what will happen to the young Moorehawke girl, and how Chris became a slave..

Excellent first novel. I'm looking forward to finding the rest of the trilogy.

I enjoyed this - I wasn't sure about it at the beginning, but I got sucked in.

Review is here:
http://ticon4.com/2009/09/review-the-poison-throne-by-celine-kiernan/

I loved this book.

The author's storytelling is spot-on. The characters are human. Really. With the the flaws and irritations that real people have. I was charmed by the relationships between Wynter and her father and Wynter and her "brother" the prince. I worried for a time that they would fall into that oh-so-common trap of falling in love with each other- despite having been raised as siblings- but I was pleasantly surprised at the way they maintained a caring sibling relationship throughout.

And the cats talk!

One of my two major quibbles was with Wynter's name. It didn't fit in with the world, and sounded a little pretentious... but thankfully all my reservations were appeased in the sequel.

This book is so intense. I read it first when I was a young teen and it traumatized me.

The mention of body parts, allusions to sex, and graphic torture were a harsh surprise to my innocent younger self. The court politics in this are savage -- old friends betraying each other and family turning against family. This book also powerfully conveys the feeling of coming home after a long time to find that the place where you belong is gone, which is unsettling and uncomfortable.

HOWEVER I never forgot this book, and kept thinking about it for years after I got rid of it, so when I saw it again at Goodwill I had to pick it up again. It is as disconcerting as I remember, but it makes me want to write. The combination of the main characters' strong love for each other, and the ruthless court politics they are trying to survive is exactly the kind of thing that piques my desire to create stories. For that, it is a very valuable book and I will absolutely get the rest of the series.

It does make me uncomfortable that fifteen-year-old Wynter and nineteen-year-old Christopher are set up to be a romance in the future, since that's quite an age gap. I'm okay with it in this book, since things were kept decently platonic and Christopher was sent away to Morocco. Hopefully by the time they meet again Wynter will have grown up a little.

3.5 - I didn't think I liked it much when read years ago, but the plot has stuck with me.

I was so excited when I was finally able to read this, and it was really just plain disappointing. The world building is nonexistant, and the plot slow. I really don't know what the point was. There is a bunch of running around the castle, and that was fine at first, but then I found out that was all there was to it. That might have been ok if the characters were amazing, and I really do like character based fantasy, but some of these characters just got on my nerves. They would have been ok in smaller doses, but instead they are shoved down our throats. Just not my thing really, and I really really wanted to like it.

Just all around an excellent read. I'm looking around for the next book already, because I've actually developed a kind of concern for the three young protagonists of this book. The friendship and love between Wynter, Razi, and Christopher is sometimes the only thing that kept me going through all the dark and unhappy things happening in this book, and I want to see it safely through.

Also, I'm hoping for Wynter to meet a talking cat that isn't a total jerk.