Venom's Taste: House of Serpents, Book I (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is creepy and sexy at the same time. The protagonist/anti-hero really gets worked over and his quest is brutal. I liked the way she plotted this out. It had none of the sappy, hack and slash feel one "might" expect from sci-fi/fantasy.

Forgotten Realms is a very decent collection of authors, but Lisa Smedan is by far one of the brightest stars in the night time sky. my biggest complaint is that it takes her forever to write anything. She is deft at creative uses of the English language, and her plots are nice and thick like oatmeal (without the lumps!)

Okay - I will leave you with that horrifying visual. Try this book - if you don't like it, I will buy it from you :-P

Dusty White
Author of How to Get ANY MAN to do ANYTHING You Want!

The highlights of this book are two things that I have not read much about in Forgotten Realms books - Psionics and the Yuan-ti race. Both of which are really cool and equally facinating. The Yuan-ti are an elitest race of human-snakes and some of them can shapeshift into a snake or into a human. The culture of the Yuan-ti is one of the best things about this race because I had read somethings about them in other books (The Black Bouquet) but it was very brief and the description was very poor leaving no addition information. There is infultration of the Yuan-ti "castle" and so much insight into their lives.

The other really cool thing about this book is that there is very little magic, but the creatures and characters are psionics (they use mind powers like charms and such). I like books that explore other areas of character/class ability besides just magic/wizards/magic items. And there are quite a few different psionic tricks to unfold throughout the book.

I think the story line was also interesting and intriging leaving many options for the storyline in book 2 and 3. This will be a good trilogy but the main problem I had was the convience of some of the psionic spells and how they used them. This is a common complaint about movies and books (especially fantasy) is that they just happened to have the only spell (which is totally obscure) to get them out of their situation. I don't mind when this happens in books and movies because it's possible for the characters to know such things - but in this book it is reaching pretty bad. I just wish sometimes the characters would have used their wit and physical ability and cunningness instead of magically finding out a psionic spell at the very last possible second.

Overall, good book, and the trilogy will be better as the sum of all the parts. Great races, great psionic spells - the book is just a little annoying at parts.