For the first time in generations, the ruler of Orkena has called for the Crossing: his three heirs will embark upon a race across the desert, and the first to make it – and kill the human sacrifice at the end – will win the throne.

All Zahru wants to do is go to the kick-off party. She’s only a Whisperer, someone who can speak with animals, so she’s not qualified to be in any of the heirs’ entourage to help them in the race (like healers). She and a friend sneak in and plan to have a grand old time. But in the most unfortunate series of events I’ve read in quite some time (even exceeding that of the Lemony Snicket series), Zahru is marked as the sacrifice, and she’s dragged across the desert by the various heirs as they capture, lose, and recapture her, all with the intent of stabbing her through the heart at the end.

Seasoned readers of fantasy will be able to predict the basic structure of this story almost immediately. Events will occur in such a way that Zahru will spend some time with each heir; she’ll make several attempts to escape but all of them will fail; and the climax will involve her being stabbed, though she won’t die right away (cliffhanger!). Familiar stories are comforting, so this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s enough new stuff in there – the class structure based upon magical ability, how magic fades and takes its toll on the user, tantalizing hints at political and military activities with the surrounding countries, genuinely interesting characters with a few surprising secrets – that readers should be interested throughout.

But – and this is a big but – the book’s description on the jacket flap gives away the first third of the book. Zahru doesn’t become the sacrifice and start the Crossing until pretty far in, and I found myself wondering when the promised story – not just what I already knew – would begin. Add this to the fact that once it did begin, I could predict a lot of it, and I found myself a bit disappointed.

Mae tries her level best to get her readers to believe that the heirs who are willing to go through with the sacrifice (and who aren’t particularly conflicted about it!) aren’t terrible people, really. They have their reasons. They’ve had sad lives, maybe, or they really are the best for the job and this is the only way, shouldn’t she want to die for her country? Zahru’s unwavering belief that if they just get to know her, they’ll change their minds and decide not to murder her is so naive it’s painful to read. The emphasis on kindness – so strong it’s half of the title – rubbed me the wrong way. Zahru does occasionally fight back against the people intending to kill her, but mostly she just tries to be really kind to them, to listen and be empathetic, and then figuratively crosses her fingers that her kindness will cause a complete personality shift.

What makes this idea especially off-putting is that the sacrifice is traditionally one of the lower-class members of their society, meaning that this problem of ritualized murder is structural. Zahru herself doesn’t belong to this lower class but is still considered lesser because of her undervalued magical ability. All this makes the idea of kindness as a panacea especially distasteful. Teen girls are often told that they should be kind, to the point that they aren’t given the proper tools to defend themselves or even recognize that they are being mistreated when they are harassed, abused, or assaulted (or, you know, threatened with ritual murder). Books like this do nothing to dispel this misguided notion that kindness is king, and in fact reinforces it, at some points even arguing that it’s a novel concept no one has tried before. Ultimately, The Kinder Poison is a fun read, but not one I’ll be recommending far and wide.

Review copy provided by the publisher. The Kinder Poison is available June 16.