Reviews with content warning for Blood - Lady Smoke

Just like Ash Princess, Lady Smoke was a slightly above average YA high fantasy novel which is why I gave it 3.5 stars as well. While the world and characters are more explored here and the stakes get higher, the general plot lacks something in comparison to the first novel.

After the events of the first book, Theo is now on Dragonsbane’s ship with Soren as a prisoner. There, she has to find a way how to defeat the Kaiser and give her country back to her people. This first part of the novel was so slow since the characters spend most of their time only on this one ship. Additionally, they just plan their next steps but don’t act too much. The plan is then that Theo should marry someone so that they have an alliance which was honestly a bit random? For this, they go to the court of king Eristo who acts as a matchmaker and is really sexist, urgh.

But all in all, this whole thing feels pointless because

none of their plans work since most of their allies get killed and Theo leaves the kingdom without marrying anyone

. It furthermore started to annoy me how they always had to rescue Soren from something. What I liked about this part of the story was the small court intrigue and the plot point around the refugee camp that felt just more meaningful than the rest. Theo also has some character development and realizes that her mother is maybe not like she believed her to be. There are otherwise some epic moments, like

Theo killing Coltania(?) after she tries to poison her

Only when they leave the kingdom, the plot fastens a bit, and they try to find more people to fight the Kaiser which was interesting as well. It was so great to see how

they have a quite big alliance in the end

. Like I’ve said above, the most interesting thing about this novel for me was to see the different countries that felt quite real, and the political conflicts between them. While the ending was dramatic, it was quite anticlimactic

how Cress kills the Kaiser out of the blue. This was just a bit unsatisfying, and he felt like a more realistic villain to me than Cress who feels often just comical

What I also appreciate about Lady Smoke is that there are quite a lot of interesting female characters. I don’t have anything to say about Theo; she’s a good protagonist. When looking at the love triangle, I have to say that I don’t care for Blaise at all. He annoys me with always wanting to sacrifice himself and thinking that he has to protect Theo. Honestly, it seems to me that Theo kinda manipulates him since I don’t have the feeling that she actually likes him romantically. I prefer Soren over him since he doesn’t think that he needs to protect Theo and respects her more in my opinion. His relationship with Theo is also way more interesting.

Lady Smoke ends again with an amazingly dramatic ending which is a big contrast compared to the rather boring rest of the book. With that, there’s only one book left until Theo (hopefully) gets her throne back.

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hapalyn's review against another edition

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adventurous funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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savanhahope's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

So far this is my favorite book of the trilogy. I'm excited to see where the third installment goes.

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queer_bookwyrm's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Lady Smoke by Laura Sebastian is the second book in the Ash Princess trilogy. We continue to follow Theo and her friends after their escape on Dragonsbane's ship.

This book continues its examination of power and greed, and continuously points out the privilege of the ruling ruling class. We see it in Sta'Crivero, an opulent city with technology, where they only value beautiful things. The citizens of this city see the Astrean and other refugees as cursed, and keep them behind walls instead of helping them.

We also see their privilege when Theo meets with the King and everyone present presses Theo to tell them all about the tragedy she has experienced. I really appreciated this part of the book, because it exposes how much people want tragedy porn. They say they want to know these things out of compassion, but it's just entertainment when you will never know such suffering. Our world is dealing with that right now. News stories, articles, think pieces, tv shows; they all center tragedy as entertainment.

I loved the growth of our cast of characters in this book! I love their dynamics, especially Art. Theo is coming into her own and coming to terms with the fact that she will not be the Queen of Peace that her mother was. "But you are the Queen of Flame and Fury, Theodosia, and you will set their world on fire."

There is plenty of court intrigue and random queer side characters, which is nice. Been a while since I shipped anyone, but I ship Erik and Heron so hard!

I love the concept of these books and can't wait to finish up the series with Ember Queen!

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