Poison

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Poison is a young-adult English-language fantasy novel written by Chris Wooding, published in 2003. It is a highly metafictional novel which follows the adventures of a young female protagonist named Poison as she attempts to rescue her sister from the Phaerie Realm. It contains many intertextual references particularly to mythology, fairy tales and secondary world fantasy characteristics.
Wooding credits his travels through Europe as the inspiration for Poison, which he began writing a year after returning home. He says of the novel:
"It can be read one level as a weird, gruesome kind of fairy tale, but there's a lot more to it than that. I spent most of my time writing this novel worrying about whether anyone would 'get' it, or whether it would sound like some degenerate A-Level student's philosophical rant when it was all finished instead of the story it was supposed to be, but I think it all worked out fine in the end. I'm very happy with it, anyways. And at least I got to put all the folklore I studied at University to good use."