A review by wealhtheow
Poison Sleep by Tim Pratt, T.A. Pratt

3.0

Marla Mason is the chief sorcerer of her city, sworn to protect it against all magical attacks. When a woman with reality-bending powers awakens from a catatonic state and starts unmeaningly wreaking havoc, Marla is on the job. She's not thrilled that her only option seems to be to kill Genevieve, who is unable to control herself but not evil, and even less happy when it becomes clear that Genevieve has brought her nightmares to life, and they will do far more damage.

For some reason I just adore Marla, who is a bruiser of a sorcerer and is forthright and pragmatic to a fault. I really like the variety of sorcerers that she deals with, from a pollution magician to someone who's basically doing magic with science. (Or science with magic? It's not clear.) And I liked how this resolved (

Spoiler

I saw Joshua the lovetalker being the spy from pretty early on, like I think a lot of readers did, but I don't see that as a flaw. There are red flags from very early on that Marla is involving him too much and not being rational about him, so I totally understood why she didn't see what I did. I think I expected her to be able to defeat Joshua because she didn't really love him or something like that, but I liked that instead, she did love him, she's just capable of killing the things she loves. And although I felt like it took forever for Genevieve to get herself together and realize Reave could be defeated, that felt realistic too.), although a few too many characters I liked died along the way.