51l0 vYvmaL. SL160 Poison Sleep by T.A. Pratt ReviewPoison Sleep (Marla Mason, Book 2) by T.A. Pratt

Poison Sleep is the second instalment in the adventures of Marla Mason. The more I read of this character the more she comes across as a calculated cross pollination between three or four of the successful female leads in the genre. T.A. Pratt has taken a pinch here and a scoop there, tossed in his own special ingredients, and come up with something that has most of the strengths and few of the weaknesses of its contemporaries. Not that the series is without fault, but more of that later. The story commences in Felport, where Marla is Chief Sorcerer, with a problem at the Blackwing Institute. This is a kind of Azkaban for grown ups, where psychologically disturbed sorcerers — some criminal some just ill — are kept away from society. One of the patients is a woman called Genevieve, who has the ability to reweave reality according to her whim. She is not a criminal, but rather a rape victim, whose trauma has made her unstable, and therefore highly dangerous. Genevieve has been mostly catatonic for 15 years, until a failed attempt to break out one of the real criminals, accidentally caused her to wake. By the time Marla Mason arrives on the scene, Genevieve has escaped, and due to her mental state and near limitless powers, is considered an immediate and serious danger to Felport.

The SF Site Featured Review: Poison Sleep.