Publication Day: May 1st 2018
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Amazon ~ Goodreads ~ TBD
Synopsis: The beginning to an epic medieval fantasy trilogy, perfect for Game of Thrones fans.
A shrewd princess whose father is plotting against her. A brave soldier turned traitor. A loyal servant on a quest to avenge his family. A streetwise demon smoke hunter in desperate need of money. A charming thief with no clue about his true identity. Their lives would never intersect, until a war between kingdoms bubbles up, and the dangerous truth about demon smoke intertwines all their fates. Welcome to The Smoke Thieves, a tangled web of political intrigue, shifting alliances, and forbidden love, in a world where sometimes no amount of magic can keep you safe.
My Rating
4/5 stars
My Review
The Smoke Thieves was a fantastic novel, set in an amazing world that I can't get enough of.
This story is told in the point of view of 5 different characters, while I enjoyed everyones story and character development, I don't think it was necessary for all five characters to have a story in their point of view.
Catherine was definitely my favourite character in the story. She is a princess who is forced to do as the king and her brother tell her to. She is forced to travel to another country to marry a prince she has never met before, even though she would much rather be with her guard Ambrose.
Ambrose is listed as a traitor after killing one of the Prince's guard in order to save his own life. While on the run, Ambrose discovers that the King plans on invading Pitoria, and using his own daughter's wedding as a distraction.
March is a servant, who detests his King for what he has done to the rest of his people and his family. When an opportunity arises to get revenge on his King, March travels to Pitoria to find the King's bastard son, and erase the royal line from existence.
Edyon is the bastard son of the King, the only problem is that he doesn't know it. Even worse, he doesn't know that the handsome stranger that promised to take him to his father, could be actually sending him to his death.
Tash is a demon hunter. Along with her partner Gravell, the two travel across Pitoria slaying demons and stealing their smoke. But selling demon smoke is illegal in Pitoria, and the two hunters must be very careful on who they sell their smoke to.
All of these characters are all very unique, but in a good way. While it was nice to jump from one point of view to another to keep the story interesting, I just found that once the characters met up and were in the same place, it felt a little repetitive on reading the description of the same person from another's point of view and just constantly hearing the same thing over and over again. I think three points of view would have been much better, but I can also see that the author was trying to go for more of a game of thrones style with multiple main characters.
My absolutely favourite part of this book, was definitely the world that Sally Green created. Whenever there is a map at the beginning of the book, I glance at it when I first start to read the book, and then I either forget about it or take a glance once more and just never look at it again. With this book, for some reason I was constantly flipping back to the map just to see where each character was and see if there was a possibility of them meeting up. The world was not only interesting, but very well developed. I could clearly picture all the places, and truly feel like I was a part of the story.
The pacing of this novel was alright. The beginning was a bit slow, and while there was some action, there was also a lot of slow parts of characters just planning or talking. I definitely felt like parts of this book were unnecessary, and could have been cut out to make the pacing of this book go a little bit faster.
Overall, I loved all the characters in their own way, although I think five point of views were a little bit too much. The world building was fantastic, but the pacing of the story was a little on the slow side. I would still definitely recommend this book to all YA fantasy readers, especially those that love adventure novels. I can't wait to read the next book in this series.
This story is told in the point of view of 5 different characters, while I enjoyed everyones story and character development, I don't think it was necessary for all five characters to have a story in their point of view.
Catherine was definitely my favourite character in the story. She is a princess who is forced to do as the king and her brother tell her to. She is forced to travel to another country to marry a prince she has never met before, even though she would much rather be with her guard Ambrose.
Ambrose is listed as a traitor after killing one of the Prince's guard in order to save his own life. While on the run, Ambrose discovers that the King plans on invading Pitoria, and using his own daughter's wedding as a distraction.
March is a servant, who detests his King for what he has done to the rest of his people and his family. When an opportunity arises to get revenge on his King, March travels to Pitoria to find the King's bastard son, and erase the royal line from existence.
Edyon is the bastard son of the King, the only problem is that he doesn't know it. Even worse, he doesn't know that the handsome stranger that promised to take him to his father, could be actually sending him to his death.
Tash is a demon hunter. Along with her partner Gravell, the two travel across Pitoria slaying demons and stealing their smoke. But selling demon smoke is illegal in Pitoria, and the two hunters must be very careful on who they sell their smoke to.
All of these characters are all very unique, but in a good way. While it was nice to jump from one point of view to another to keep the story interesting, I just found that once the characters met up and were in the same place, it felt a little repetitive on reading the description of the same person from another's point of view and just constantly hearing the same thing over and over again. I think three points of view would have been much better, but I can also see that the author was trying to go for more of a game of thrones style with multiple main characters.
My absolutely favourite part of this book, was definitely the world that Sally Green created. Whenever there is a map at the beginning of the book, I glance at it when I first start to read the book, and then I either forget about it or take a glance once more and just never look at it again. With this book, for some reason I was constantly flipping back to the map just to see where each character was and see if there was a possibility of them meeting up. The world was not only interesting, but very well developed. I could clearly picture all the places, and truly feel like I was a part of the story.
The pacing of this novel was alright. The beginning was a bit slow, and while there was some action, there was also a lot of slow parts of characters just planning or talking. I definitely felt like parts of this book were unnecessary, and could have been cut out to make the pacing of this book go a little bit faster.
Overall, I loved all the characters in their own way, although I think five point of views were a little bit too much. The world building was fantastic, but the pacing of the story was a little on the slow side. I would still definitely recommend this book to all YA fantasy readers, especially those that love adventure novels. I can't wait to read the next book in this series.
Happy Reading,
Aneta
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