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Bookworm Dreams

Hi, my name is Dragana, and I’m a book-o-holic. My goal in life is to read all the speculative fiction novels in the world. (or at least try)  :)

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Great world-building and characterisation for a novella

Poison Dance: A Novella - Livia Blackburne

Poison Dance is a novella set in the same world as a Livia Blackburne’s novel Midnight Thief. For all young adult fantasy fans eagerly waiting for Midnight Thief to be published in July 2014, Poison Dance is a perfect opportunity to get a sample of the world and characters they are going to meet.

 

Set in a medieval-like fantasy world, Poison Dance is a story about an assassin James and a dancer Thalia, who offers him help to escape from Assassin’s Guild if he trains her to kill a noble. While the training gets them to know each other better, slow-burning romance stats to develop, but Thalia’s inability to forget about vengeance might cost them their happiness…

 

For a novella, Poison Dance gives an an unexpected good back-story for James and Thalia so we can understand motives for their actions. Also, world building is very good, focused on just the facts we need to understand the story better. I rarely see novella that is this good, in fact many novels have less world building and characterisation.

 

One thing that adds to the medieval atmosphere in Poison Dance is use of some archaic words and sometimes strange building of sentences. Sadly, this effort was wasted on me, since I was only annoyed by it. I can not say for sure if this was the reason why I felt emotionally distanced from the characters or if it would have happened anyway.

 

In The End…

How many pages does it take for an author to display his talent? For Livia Blackburne it only took about 50 pages or so. I can not wait to see if her debut novel Midnight Thief will have the same good characterisation, world-building and interesting characters.

 

BTW Poison Dance is currently FREE ebook for Kindle on Amazon, so it’s a perfect chance to grab it and check out what am I talking about. ;)

 

Disclaimer: I was given a free eBook by the author in exchange for a honest review.

Source: http://www.bookwormdreams.com/novella-review-poison-dance-by-livia-blackburne