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now_booking 's review for:
Smoke in the Sun
by Renée Ahdieh
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is the second and I assume, concluding, book to the Flame in the Mist series. Admittedly, YA Fantasy is not my genre of choice and so I’m not sure how original or how good this is in the general context of that genre, but I thought it was okay, if a little unnecessarily long-drawn out.
You definitely have to have read Flame in the Mist for this to make any sense as it picks up from where Book 1 ended. The premise is that Okami has been arrested and Mariko is being “forced” into marriage within the royal house who “rescued” her, in order to prove her loyalty to the emperor. Mariko is willing to do anything to rescue her love, Okami, even sell her soul in the devil. But the empire is crumbling from the treachery in the imperial castle and there are darker forces at play than Mariko realizes, forces which may be much more powerful than love.
This book ends with a conclusion to Mariko and Okami’s story but I felt a little left adrift with what happens with Mariko’s twin, Kenshin, especially with how the book ends. I found this book to be a little piecey at times and rambling. I was frankly a little bored reading it but persisted to know what the outcome was going to be. I found that the resolution came a little too easily after all the trouble Raidan’s mother and the Black Clan and Mariko had gone through. There were a lot of bits and pieces dropped in this that I was interested in that were never followed through. This was just okay for me. I found the first book more compelling. This has been discussed as a somewhat feminist work of YA Fantasy because of how primary the roles of girls and women are in this book in sustaining and driving the main actions and really any act of bravery. And for the strong, brave, intrepid women in this book, love is their motivator (well apart from Yumi) but outside of love, perhaps other motivators were unexplored. Perhaps more difficult conversations and confrontations could have been had. I still feel that more could have been done with this story. That said, this was fine and if you like YA Fantasy, you might really like this.
You definitely have to have read Flame in the Mist for this to make any sense as it picks up from where Book 1 ended. The premise is that Okami has been arrested and Mariko is being “forced” into marriage within the royal house who “rescued” her, in order to prove her loyalty to the emperor. Mariko is willing to do anything to rescue her love, Okami, even sell her soul in the devil. But the empire is crumbling from the treachery in the imperial castle and there are darker forces at play than Mariko realizes, forces which may be much more powerful than love.
This book ends with a conclusion to Mariko and Okami’s story but I felt a little left adrift with what happens with Mariko’s twin, Kenshin, especially with how the book ends. I found this book to be a little piecey at times and rambling. I was frankly a little bored reading it but persisted to know what the outcome was going to be. I found that the resolution came a little too easily after all the trouble Raidan’s mother and the Black Clan and Mariko had gone through. There were a lot of bits and pieces dropped in this that I was interested in that were never followed through. This was just okay for me. I found the first book more compelling. This has been discussed as a somewhat feminist work of YA Fantasy because of how primary the roles of girls and women are in this book in sustaining and driving the main actions and really any act of bravery. And for the strong, brave, intrepid women in this book, love is their motivator (well apart from Yumi) but outside of love, perhaps other motivators were unexplored. Perhaps more difficult conversations and confrontations could have been had. I still feel that more could have been done with this story. That said, this was fine and if you like YA Fantasy, you might really like this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Violence