Smoke

I liked this novel, but I suspect that had I read this one before I read R.F. Kuang's Babel, I might have felt differently about both. The worlds they weave are very similar, in a similar time period with a similar message---the powerful holding onto power by monopolizing resources and leveraging an existing caste system---but conveyed from a slightly different angle. I liked Babel better, but I can't tell if that's because I read it first or if it's just better.

One of the benefits of a cross-country airline flight is a lot of sitting without other distractions competing for your time. Without a back and forth trip this weekend, I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to finish this book.

I should start by saying that upon reflection, I'm not sure this is really the book for me; however, I think a lot of people will love it.

"Smoke" tells the alternate-history version of Victorian England where people emit a smoke whenever they do something bad like tell a lie, lose their temper, think a bad thought, steal, etc. And yet some people (namely those in the church, government, the rich, and those in authority), don't seem to smoke. The poor, uneducated, powerless, smoke all the time.

The premise show more of the book is fascinating. The first chapter (actually the first third) of the book is so well-written I was completely engaged. Then the book starts to get a bit convoluted and I lost interest. Its 448 pages seemed to drag on eternally. I attribute this partially to the story losing focus and partially to me just not being the right audience for this alternate reality/science fiction/dystopian sort of book.

In spite of my issues with the book I am always amazed at how closely fiction mirrors reality (even wildly creative fiction, like this). Characters in this book want to remove all foreigners from England, "build walls", and the divide between rich and poor is startling. Vyleta had to have written this book long before the U.S. Presidential campaign but the themes sounded eerily similar.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3 for creativity and originality.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. show less

This was a lot of fun—Victorian-era Britain with a slightly steampunkish vibe, boarding school, class lite, morality, addiction, secret underground passages, ambiguous villainy—enough to keep me up past my bedtime a few nights. But the ending just fell apart in total The Goldfinch grandstanding syndrome, all talky and didactic after so much rollicking action. Still, most of it was really entertaining, if uneven, and I definitely enjoyed it.

Although I’ve never been a fan of sword and sorcery fantasy fiction, I do enjoy the sub-genre of “urban fantasy” – stories that take place on a recognizable Earth but with fantastical elements. Recent favorites include Lev Grossman’s amazing Magicians trilogy and Natasha Pulley’s Victorian-era fantasia, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. While Dan Vyleta’s Smoke is darker (and more edge-of-your-seat suspenseful) than those books, I’d say it definitely falls under the same umbrella.

It takes place in an alternative reality England during the early part of the Twentieth Century. The smoke of the title is a substance emitted by the human body when experiencing heightened emotions, like lust or rage. Even a surfeit of joy can show more cause one to smoke. And it’s believed to be an outward manifestation of sin. Those born rich and privileged spend their formative years learning to control it while the poor and working class live in overcrowded London, under a literal smog of their own smoke and soot. A very literal version of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s “great unwashed.” Furthermore, breathing in the smoke of others incites destructive emotions as well, so the underclass are doomed to an inescapable cycle of rage, lust and a kind of criminal madness.

The central theme is not only quite obvious, but timely, in this age when the world’s wealthiest 1% controls the fate of the rest of us. But, as universal as it is, it’s also a specifically English story, particularly in its indictment of the English class system with its stiff upper lip snobbery and the chilling legacy of colonialism.

The opening chapters take place in an elite boy’s school where the scions of the country’s great families are primed to assume their roles as England’s next generation of leaders. And it’s populated with all the recognizable boarding school tropes and stereotypes – the pompous prefects and self-righteous headmasters, the power struggles and secret rituals. This is where we meet our protagonists, Thomas and Charlie, two very different boys who uncover a nefarious plot that takes them from the posh country estate of a mad baron all the way to the sewer system deep below London in search of answers. I hesitate to give more details, because the real joy of this story is in the slow reveal.

As well as fantasy, this book is a mystery and thriller. Just like the teenaged heroes, I had no idea what exactly was happening or who could be trusted until the very end. Plus, there are innumerable nail-biting moments and a truly terrifying evil villain. I think this book has a broad appeal. It falls into many genre categories - it's a period piece, a mystery, a thriller, fantasy, horror, even a little YA and yet it defies categorization. It's just beautifully written and highly recommended. show less

I surprised myself a little by giving this four stars; all the while I was reading it I'd fully expected to be giving it an easy five. It's so wildly unique, a remarkable recreation of the world with one extraordinary addition. And it's a well-built recreation, a fully realized alternative England with the vital difference of the Smoke.

The Smoke … what a fascinating, wildly unique idea. All of a person's base thoughts and deeds manifest in wisps – or clouds, or billows, depending – of visible matter, leaving a smell in the air and soot on clothing and everything else. And it's self-perpetuating, as its presence in the air sparks off behavior which leads to more Smoke … English culture has warped around the phenomena: theatre is show more so thoroughly banned that children don't know what it is, and schools seem to concentrate as much on the amount of soot you show as on your grasp of arithmetic. They're certainly not going to br teaching you Shakespeare. Or evolution. (Or about giraffes, for some reason.)

While I admire the tight-lipped style of storytelling – tight alternating points of view, with absolutely none of the dreded "info-dumping" – it was also frustrating at times. How and when and where did the Smoke originate? Is it worldwide? What is the science behind it? Some answers are provided, but only what the main characters discover – and they don't dig for answers to the same questions I was asking.

What took a star away from my rating was, in the end, the direction of the plot and its resolution. As a whole the book seemed to lack a certain clarity. I think part of the problem was that the author succumbed to the temptation of giving the villain of the piece his own point of view sections, and I find that this usually serves to weaken a story. To my mind, it's always better to keep a book's focus on the main characters, letting the reader wonder with them what the bad guys are up to, being surprised when they are when the bad guys pop up, rather than indulging in a bit of evil gloating through the villain's eyes, followed often by a recap of the same scene once the protagonists cover the same ground.

Still and all, it was an impressive, if somewhat chilly book.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review. show less

*Free e-book ARC provided by the publisher through Edelweiss/Above the Treeline. No money or goods were exchanged, and all views are my own.*

Smoke. It arises from every person, and some say it is the very embodiment of sin that needs to be taught out of every child. It's everywhere, especially in a city like London where so many people gather and work. The lower classes especially are covered in Soot. At the boys' school where Charlie and his friend Thomas attend, their teachers check the students' clothes and monitor them closely. When Thomas and Julius come to blows and their Smoke rises up thick and somehow different, Thomas believes his past has come back to haunt him. Is he doomed to repeat the sins of his father? Is his Smoke show more indeed evil rising up in him?

The way the story unfolds I was surprised by some of the twists and turns but in the end they felt inevitable as the explanations became first more confusing and finally more clear. The narrative is told in multiple points of view, some first-person and others third-person, giving the reader slightly more information than the main characters but still leaving questions until the very last page. The tension and atmosphere are perfect and kept me wanting to turn pages. Questions of ethics and the nature of sin give plenty of food for thought. My only complaint was the love triangle created between Charlie, Thomas, and a girl named Livia. I could only believe that she loved Charlie and never quite got how/why/when she also started liking Thomas. In addition to this, it's purposely unresolved, and the way it was done annoyed me, though some readers will perhaps not mind. Recommended for readers who would enjoy the Gothic atmosphere and enjoy having a little bit of different inserted into the real world. show less

This was really shockingly good - a story set in an alternate Victorian England, where sin is made manifest by smoke that rises from the body of the sinner. The aristocracy don't Smoke; that's how you can tell they're meant to rule. Of course, it isn't that simple. I found the characters a little flat, the prose a little too literary to really suck me into the story, but the world itself - and the way people try to use Smoke to shore up their own ideas and politics - was more than enough to make up for it.