Reviews with content warning for Murder - Lady Smoke

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Lady Smoke by Laura Sebastian

11 reviews

mariyah_reads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Blaise annoys me. I didn't really like Soren in the first book but I'm actually growing to like the whole dynamic between him and Theo.

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sweetchocolatez's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad 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

4.0

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bookishbutterfly's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious 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? No

3.75

One thing to add : the worldbuilding is much better than in the first book.

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prunechips's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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? Yes

4.0

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rinku's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

3.5

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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bzliz's review

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adventurous dark emotional tense slow-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

3.25

This evolution from Ash Princess sees our protagonist Theo starting to move from the panic of escape to making plans to go on the offense. The plot dragged in some points for me where it felt like characters were rehashing the same conversations without reason and settling on the same course of action having gained no new insight.

The love triangle-y pieces of Theo’s relationships with Blaise and Søren feel like an obligation of the YA fantasy genre. I would find it a lot more satisfying if it either didn’t exist or if it coexisted more peacefully, knowing that Astrean culture is that queens don’t marry and they tend to be more open. It could have been a good opportunity to really seize that and acknowledge that Theo loves both these guys- maybe to different degrees- and they need to come to the realization that neither of them are the most important piece of her life.

Big spoiler ahead

The Kaiser’s death didn’t feel significant enough. To have Cress- now with this power due to her failed murder attempt- swoop in and snuff him out in an effort to elevate her to true villain status felt cheap to me. This man orchestrated years of abuse for so many people and for him to meet his demise at the hands of someone who truly only benefited from his behavior feels so unearned, even if it is just meant to drive Theo’s discovery of her own power and show her that she needs to get stronger.

I still look forward to reading the third book, in hopes that it gives me the kind of ending I wanted Game of Thrones to give Daenerys.

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whatischellereading's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was another brilliant book despite it being much less action packed than book 1 - also a bit slower paced.

I liked the character development in this, seeing more of Heron, Art and even Erik. As side characters I think it's great learning much more about them, especially Art's relationship with her mother.

Another book with twists that I didn't see coming, with moments I actually gasped!

The love triangle between Theo, Blaise and Soren is really gritting me though... Theo has already confessed to herself that she is in love with Soren so why on earth is she still leading Blaise on? And why is she not being honest with Soren about her somewhat different love for Blaise? I don't get it and I'm losing respect for her character on that front...

Overall it was still an addictive read and I'm really looking forward to the finale.

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