In a short time I’ve really become quite devoted to this series. As I’ve said in my earlier reviews of Kushiel’s Avatar‘s predecessors, these books encapsulate everything that I want in a fantasy series. Balanced on the shoulders of an incomparable heroine, the story is both epic and personal. With every installment, Carey takes the opportunity to expand the world building out into foreign countries that are recognizably rooted in real-life analogs. So far we’d seen Scotland, Scandanavia, Italy, and now this book gets into […]
Over there, inside the Smoke, pain was joy and anger peace. Violence was love.
The alternative world presented in Smoke is a fascinating idea, and a mix of ideas I was thrilled to be spending time with. In Vyleta’s altered Victorian England sinful thoughts and feelings are manifested as smoke that rises from your skin and leaves a unwashable soot behind. Breathing in the smoke of another can spread their feelings into you, and breed more and darker thoughts. The cleanest of people, who happen also to be the wealthiest, are seen as morally better people, and spend their lives learning […]
City of Meh
A city called Ember has survived, as the citizens believe, as the only human civilization left after a catastrophe no one can remember. Things aren’t going well though because the lights won’t stay on, supplies are running low, and growing political unrest. The city doesn’t produce anything other than vegetables in green houses, so any building materials have to be recycled. Even things such as paper and coloring items (e.g. paints, crayons, colored pencils, etc.) have become luxury items. Lina and Doon are 12 and […]
Make Wakanda Great Again!
This was a much better read for me than Book 1. While I still feel that I’m missing some of the context that happened before Book 1, Book 2 continues from where Book 1 left off, returning to familiar characters and conflicts. Book 2 continues to show us the ongoing conflict between the Wakandans and their Black Panther and the rival guerilla leader who is trying to get Wakandans to return to their past roots. Ironically, reading this post-election, it feels like this rival leader […]