Poison's Cage

How it reads

Poison's Cage is young adult (ya fantasy, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in an invented world, in no single period, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are power and politics, identity and survival. In weight it's light and escapist — easy to fall into.

It opens a series. It ends on a cliffhanger, so have the next book ready. At 336 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's moderately known: read by plenty of people, but not a household name.