Poison Princess (The Arcana Chronicles) by Kresley Cole

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“Watch your six, Reaper, I’m on the hunt.”
A rasping chuckle. -Your Death awaits.-

-Page 368

Summary

“22 Arcana cards. 22 Chosen Teens. Let the cards fall where they may.

Sixteen-year-old Evie Greene’s horrific hallucinations predicted the apocalypse, and the end of the world brought her all sorts of new powers. With the earth scorched and few survivors, Evie teams up with handsome and dangerous Jack Deveaux in a race to find answers. They discover that that an ancient prophesy is being played out, and Evie is not the only one with special powers. A group of teens have been chosen to reenact the ultimate battle between good and evil. But it’s not always clear who is on which side… “

-From Kresley Cole’s website.

Review

Okay, this is just going to be an absolutely love fest. Because this book was absolutely fantastic! It was nothing like any of the other YA books I have read and it was just so well written. I will start off by saying that this is definitely an older YA book because of certain themes as well as some of the violent content. There are no curse words, and the few curse words that are used, Cole cleverly changes up so that she switches letters around to make the word something different. If you know the word then you’ll know what it should be, but if you don’t, it will just look like some made up curse word, which is extremely clever.

The violence in the book is a little graphic at times. Especially when it jumps to the present day. How the story is set up is that the main character, Evangeline, is telling the story to someone who welcomes her into the home and by the end of the story, the past has been told and her arriving in the home is the present and that is where the book ends to set up for the next book in the series. Parts of the themes in the book, especially the guy who she is telling the story to in the present, is extremely creepy and pulled on some nasty themes. There are a lot of implications of rape, though nothing happens. A younger reader wouldn’t completely get that but as an older reader, you know exactly what is being implied. Then the guy who she is telling the story to, think of like one of the creepier episodes of Criminal Minds (I hope most people know this show) and think of how twisted they get with dungeons and torture. That is kind what the guy is like, so it gets a little brutal.

Now the rest of the story is just lots of apocalypse stuff. Something happens, called The Flash, and everything goes to shit, essentially. You’re never clear exactly what The Flash was, but you’re told it was a solar flare, though it’s never clear exactly what caused it, and leaves questions to be answered later on in the series. Out in the world, there are some horrible people, and some nasty themes brought up again. Mentions of cannibalism as well as the enslavement of women too. It seems like during The Flash, when most people were killed, a lot of them were women, so women were scarce, so they were wanted by slavers and stuff. Younger readers would just think that women were special though older readers would know exactly what was going on.

The two main characters, Evangeline and Jackson, are traveling together and it follows them from when they met before The Flash to surviving together after it. There is some great character development between the two of them and a lot of advances as well as steps back too, though I did sometimes want to smack Jackson so damn hard. There was definitely some sexual undertones going on, sometimes a little more prevalent, so you can definitely say that there is a romance theme to the book, but it is by no means a major theme in the book at all.

I also really like the fact that this is called The Arcana Chronicles. I have never once read a book about the Arcana cards. I have once seen an anime about the Arcana cards, Arcana Famiglia and it was really good, but besides that I have not seen anything about these cards and this was totally awesome!

Overall this was a fantastic book and I definitely do recommend it. I can’t read the second and third book for a little bit as I have to wait for my next school break, so I’ll have to wait for the new year, and until then it’s going to kill me, this wait.

But until then, definitely check this series out and enjoy it!

Happy Reading!