Like its predecessor Poison Study, Magic Study is an awesome adventure featuring the young magician and former food tester Yelena and her company of brave friends. In Magic Study, Maria V. Snyder takes us even further along Yelena’s journey as she goes home to discover the family she had never known existed. Once there, she is met with a hostile brother and others who doubt her sincerity, believing her to be a spy from Ixia. (Spoilers ahead.)

While Yelena’s love story with Valek is once again the subplot of the novel, that’s what makes it most romantic and satisfying. Rather than being shoved in the reader’s face like other fantasy novels (for example, “I couldn’t imagine how an angel could be any more glorious. There was nothing about him that could be improved upon” in the one fantasy we all wish we could forget…), it is Yelena’s courage, powers, and role as the savior of her new world that are the main focus.

Once established as a student in her new surroundings in Sitia, Yelena quickly makes a few new friends—as well as several new enemies, jealous of her station as a newcomer. She also forges a friendship with a less-than-savory young man who believes he is heir to the throne and is intent upon overthrowing the government of Ixia. Horses become her new allies as well as she bonds with several of the creatures mentally, a rare gift for a magician with her lack of training.

Of course, Yelena cannot stay out of trouble to attend to her studies for long. There are several attacks on young women in the area by a strange perpetrator who eats their souls after he tortures and rapes them. Yelena helps heal the eleventh victim of the magician so quickly and wholly—at great risk to herself—that the magicians of Sitia start believing that she is a Soul Finder, which could be bad news for her. She is also identified as the rogue magician’s next victim and must sacrifice herself in order to capture him and save the life of another girl.

Valek does appear in the novel, though not nearly as prominently as he did in the first. This is Yelena’s starring role. When he is in the book, their unique bond provides her with an increase in power to help save herself. He sneaks into Sitia in disguise (naturally—Valek is renowned for his skill in disguise) and they do share some passionate moments together, though, as they were in the first novel, they are not the steamy, all-detailed scenes many romance novels carry. Instead, it is their bond that is the most passionate, romantic element, as well as how they pine for one another when they are absent from each other. Rather than being pathetic and mopey, however, the pining is heartfelt and presented through thoughts of strength and sentiment.

The books ends with Yelena being even more powerful than she’d ever known, and still after the magician causing the harm to young girls. While the book has been criticized for its lack of place, its “Harry Potter Meets Law and Order: SUV” feel (which, of course, would make it my dream book), and Yelena’s lack of characterization, I felt that it was well worth the read. Some of these points are somewhat valid—I would have enjoyed a stronger description of place as well—but Yelena’s characterization remains the same as it was in book one. It would have been nice for a bit more of her personality—her sense of humor, for example—to show, but her hopes and fears, abilities, mistakes, triumphs, and even annoyances all shine through pretty well, providing us with a strong female lead yet again.