A Drop of Venom

A Drop of Venom is a young adult fantasy novel by Sajni Patel, published in 2024, and it is told from two sides of a conflict that has been running for years.

Manisha is sixteen and a member of the naga, whose people were driven to the edges of the earth by the King's army. She has been running from monsters since she was a child, first the beasts of the jungle and then the soldiers, and she has found a position as a priestess in the kingdom's famous holy temples on the floating mountains. The refuge does not last, because the temples and the people in them are more complicated than she hoped. Pratyush is seventeen, a celebrated slayer of monsters, one of the King's most valued warriors and a frequent visitor to the same temples, and every creature he kills adds years to his life. What he wants is to stop fighting, and true power, he learns, belongs to the King rather than to the man who uses the sword. The novel sets the two of them on a collision course.

Patel builds the story out of the idea that every monster has an origin, and its two narrators are each the villain of the other's account.