For This Young Woman, Wielding Power Is a Poisoned Blade

As Poisoned Blade opens, Jes is skyrocketing to fame on the Fives court, still juggling her training and her efforts to help her family, quietly supporting them with her winnings. She struggles to keep her actions secret from Gargaron, who would kill her family if he discovered any of them still lived. 
Meanwhile, her position in Gargaron’s household allows her to move about with more freedom and see the fractures within the Patron society that she exists to entertain. Her Commoner status helps her catch glimpses of a burgeoning revolutionary movement led by Ro-emnu, an irascible poet and a critic of the Patrons. The Commoners begin to openly resent the century-long Patron rule by oppression, racism, and abuse; Ro-emnu gives voice to the rebel forces that have for so long been silenced.
When Jes sees a chance to save her family, she slyly suggests to Lord Gargaron that a tour of the countryside will help her status as a Fives champion. This trip reunites her with her twin sister Bettany, but also throws her fully into the war threatening the Patrons. On the road, Jes is faced with the realization that her goals and the goals of her sisters may never again align, and her once united family may be fractured forever. Faced with a political coup whose depth she can’t fully know, she must realize the true cost of war and the reality of making hard decisions.
Poisoned Blade is a worthy sequel, doubling down on the tension and politics and surpassing Court of Fives in suspense and depth of world-building. The parallels between the game of Fives and the political struggles between Patrons and Commoners are more pronounced. Jes proves she is not just a superb competitor, but an incredibly savvy strategist and warrior. But for all her skill, she is still young, reeling from the loss of her familial support system,  hurt by the wedges Gargaron’s meddling has driven between her parents, and struggling to make sense of politics that have been brewing without her knowledge for decades.
This part of Jes’s story is about making powerful choices in heated moments, and how she adapts to being both right and wrong when lives are on the line. As she falls deeper into a political conspiracy, her choices have deadly, heartbreaking consequences.

The greatest strength of this second novel is the way it shows how Jes, and women like her, continue to be active agents in their own lives. Jes’s propensity for strategy allows her to work within the system in which she is a prisoner, giving her a measure of safety she wouldn’t otherwise achieve. Even when her ability to maneuver is limited, she carves out a path forward rather than passively accepting her fate, or the fate of people she cares for.
Elliott gracefully explores Jes’s life under Gargaron’s control while also examining the conditions faced by other women, allowing us to comparetheir circumstances and decisions. Each character carves out a space around Jes, influencing her judgment, an impressive accomplishment in the limited space of a YA novel, especially considering her history is largely in the realm of expansive epic fantasy. Elliott pivots ably to the YA format, building a fully realized world full of rich, complicated characters.
Jes’s position as a famous competitor gives her privilege and capital, and she must choose: is she willing to continue to compete for the man who destroyed her family? Does she support the Patrons—including her father and the boy she cares for—for a measure of control over her future? Or will she side with her mother’s people, the oppressed and abused Efeans, who seek to use the division of war to overthrow Patron rule for good? Does she choose a familiar path with restrictions and compromises, or does she launch herself into the uncertainty of revolution?
If Court of Fives was Jes’s origin story as a player, then Poisoned Blade is her realization that she is much more than simply a chess piece in a game. She’s part of a political movement, and her choices have the power to influence a distinct moment in history.
This novel is a tense, dramatic adventure, raising the stakes and the potential for drastic consequences as the story barrels toward its conclusion.