Fascinating and fantastical (and even better as an audiobook) - I loved the interweaving of facts with lore and poems.

This is such a fascinating book. It is packed full of very interesting facts and beautiful sections from history. From old stories, poetry and more. All sorts of amazing facts about plants from around the world including information about curses, poison etc about each plant. I listened to the audiobook and narrator was just so perfect. Her voice showed great passion creating a fantastic atmosphere. What I loved the most was that we got to travel the world which reading this book. There was also some very shocking stories about people who didn't know how deadly some plants actually are. My favourite story had to be a women who bought a bracelet and then became very sick causing a worldwide problem. I was totally amazed by the amount of fantastic stories there seemed to be no stone unturned here. It seems so well researched. I Don't even think one fascinating fact was even missed. I really do recommend reading this book. 

So much praise goes out to the author and publishers for creating this extremely fascinating book that I learnt so much from. I can't wait to read more from this author. 
The above review has already been placed on goodreads, waterstones, Google books, Barnes&noble, kobo, amazon UK where found and my blog https://ladyreading365.wixsite.com/website/post/botanical-curses-poisons-by-fez-inkwright-tantor-4-stars either under my name or ladyreading365 or lady Reading365 or ladyc reading

I was expecting a more indepth account of various poisons and botanicals and found the encyclopedia entry style for the various botanicals less engaging.

A big thank you to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book. I enjoyed the reading and the information the book provided

Thank you so much to net galley and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book! As an herbalist I loved this book and I really enjoyed the information

Botanical Curses and Poisons was an informational book about plants and the odd, silly, and fanatical beliefs that followed them. I loved that the book started with a really interesting intro and then told stories or poem excerpts or anecdotes concerning the plants that were being discussed. It felt like less of a school book and more of a fun lecture. I have read a few of these plant books with my son and so we recognized many of the plants and started lively discussions about them while listening to this. That makes it all the more enjoyable for me.

I was given this review copy for my unbiased opinion.

I enjoyed learning more about both common and more obscure plants and their effects on humans and animals. Great narration and fun reference book. This would be a great one to have a physical copy of.

I was surprised at how informative but readable this book was! I was glad that it was easily digestible and not more like a textbook.

The only thing wrong with this as an audiobook is that I couldn't see the illustrations (which are fantastic). The first half of this book is a history of witchy herbalism, both poisons and curatives. The second half is basically a reference tool for various plants with their particular batch of herbalist lore with each. I learned a lot (like maybe I should be cursing out my basil) and was left wanting to look up art work and run into the garden.

I enjoyed this nonfiction historical book about poisonous plants and their archaic meanings/uses/purposes. I found it incredibly interesting that "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" was actually mistranslated and should have been "poisoner." That changes things! But the mistranslation of "witch" brought on all the witch hunts over the centuries. Damn!! The narrator did a good job. This was my second nonfiction poison book and no, I'm not doing research. lol.

Fascinating collection of anecdotes and trivia about various medicinal and/or toxic plants. Some really interesting tidbits in very readable format.

When one thinks of a fun and interesting audiobook to listen to, a compendium of botanical plants and poisons is not the first one that would come to mind. But this audiobook is absolutely worth it. Fez Inkwright is a phenomenal writer and Leslie Howard makes his work come to life in this audiobook.
This is not just a straight list of plants and poisons, but it also involves stories and examples of the usage of the poisons and how they became known as such. This is a surprisingly fun book to listen too and the reader gets to learn a lot about plants and poisons.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an AudioARC in exchange for an honest review.

Have you ever wondered about the history behind poisonous plants? What about how they have been used throughout history for murder or even medicine before fully understood? Look no further than Botanical Curses and Poisons.

Filled with information as well as stories this novel presents a nice balance into the past of these plants. There are many more than I knew of and learning how some were used in plots and executions was very interesting. The narrator did a great job reading through these plants alphabetically, but knowing there are so many poisonous plants out there(or which I don't know how to identify) has definitely made me feel less prepared for an apocalypse.

Not a novel for those who aren't truly interested about the plants and are just looking for stories, but for those who are curious about plants will be pleasently surprised to have little history facts sprinkled in.

In this book, we enter the rich and mysterious world of poisonous plants.

There is a short introduction, but after this the book consists of an alphabetical compendium of plants. The author offers up science, history, and myth alike - I especially enjoyed the poetry that prefaced most of the entries. I found the writing very accessible and informative.

The narrator has a soothing voice and does a good job of keeping the listener's interest. She did seem to have a little difficulty on the pronunciation of some non-English words though.

However, I think print suits this book better than audio, as that way you can use it as a reference book.

Overall, an interesting and informative reference book that I would be interested to see in other formats.

**Thank you Netgalley and publisher for giving me an electronic ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**

This audiobook was beautiful, it holds a lot of knowledge and it is very soothing to listen too. I learned a lot from this book and I plan on using that knowledge in my novels that I plan on finishing this year.

This was an unexpected entry to my Favorite Books of 2021 bec I initially thought this was gonna be a boring almanac kind of book about plants. Thankfully, this was a mix between magic, history, folklore and just enough science that fascinated me so much!
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I think this would be a great resource for anyone looking into writing fantasy books with historically rooted magic system. It doesn't only provide names and uses of herbs and plants (and poisons!) people commonly used in the past, but also tells the lore and legends associated with said plant species. It also gives explanations on why the plants cause hallucinations, for example, or death, from a scientific standpoint.

I also really loved that it included some Filipino myths associated with the plants and that the foreign narrator got the pronunciation correct most of the time. Often, with collections of stories from different cultures, smaller countries like us tend to be disregarded to focus more on the Western ones but I really appreciated being included in this, and not just in passing. :)
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*The Audiobook ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review. It doesn't affect my opinion of the book. Thank you.
*Honestly though, I loved this book so much that I might just order this in print along with the other book from the same author, Folk Magic and Healing: An Unusual History of Everyday Plants. I'm also actively saving up for the special edition of the Seed and Sickle Oracle (from the same creator and publisher) but it's a little out of budget so I need to calm down. LOL

Audio ARC provided by NetGalley. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Audio review: Great narrator. Engaging, delivering a very interesting topic in a way that made it even more fascinating. And (unusually for a US narrator) had gone to the trouble to learn how to pronounce Gaelic / Irish / Welsh words as well as Spanish and Latin etc. (Ok so one of the Irish words wasn't right but the rest was spot on. As an Irish speaker I really appreciate this!)

Main review:

This book is awesome! A combination of plant biochemistry, the history of poisons and folklore. Obviously those are all things that would make this book exactly my kind of read but it was also very well written, with enough detail to keep the knowledgeable reader interested but not so much as to deter a newbie. The folkloric tradition around the plants discussed was fascinating and bizarre, and the descriptions of the effects of the plants on people was biologically and chemically knowledgeable without devolving into jargon. The author's passion for the subject shone through making the entire reading experience very enjoyable. Basically, I finished the audio book and immediately went and ordered the hardback, it was that good :) Highly recommend this for anyone with an interest in plant poisons, folklore or clever non fiction.

This is a very fun and interesting book. I think I'd have liked the physical book or an e-book better than the audiobook simply due to the formatting, but the narrator did a great job and I really really enjoyed hearing the history and folklore behind dangerous plants. Would definitely recommend to fantasy readers and writers, as well as history buffs alike. Very fun book!

This audiobook was a charming and restful companion on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Full of intriguing tidbits about plants, quotations from literature, and botanical folklore, it was a quiet, amusing journey through the alphabet. Warm-voiced narration complements the chatty writing style.

While I really liked the narrator for this audiobook, I don't know if this was the best format to take in this book. This was more of a reference text, so after a while a lot of the botanicals and their folktales started to meld together. I think this would better be served as a book someone dips in and out of as a specific botanical peaks their interest. I did think that Fez Inkwright did a great job of making a cohesive narrative for each plant and was able to distill a lot of information into a digestible chunk. The only thing I could pick out as a negative, is a couple of times the author says that Circe and Medea are Hekate's daughters, I had to go back to the sources on this because I didn't think this was true; Hekate is seen as a virginal titan, and daughter is often used as more of an honorific than a biological truth.