I read Smoke on my honeymoon and it’s the first book I read by Dan Vyleta that I found unsatisfying, but not for the reasons you would think.
The premise is really, really good.
In an alternate Victorian England those who are wicked are marked by the smoke that pours out of their bodies. The aristocracy are clean, proof of their virtue and right to rule, while the lower classes are drenched in sin and soot.
Thomas Argyle is the only son of a wayward aristocrat. Charlie Cooper is his best friend. When Thomas finds himself under the boot heel of a sadistic headboy in the treacherous halls of their elite boarding school, he and Charlie begin to question the rules of their society. Then the boys meet Livia, the daughter of a wealthy and powerful family. She leads them to a secret laboratory where they learn that smoke may not be as it seems, and together they set out to uncover the truth about their world.
I enjoyed the book. Like Vyleta’s other books that I’ve read – The Quiet Twin and The Crooked Maid – it was atmospheric, detail oriented, with interesting twists (not as interesting as the other two, but still good) and somehow slow but well paced.
I could predict some of the twists, which is why I didn’t think it was as good as the first two books, but the end was good enough for me to overlook this.
That said, I found the explanation for the smoke dissatisfying. I just…didn’t like it.
However. I really liked the characters – Thomas, Charlie, and Livia – are all a lot of fun. Livia was irritating for awhile, but her mother more than makes up for this. Once Livia lightens up and asserts herself, she’s great.
The villain of the story – an older boy from a very wealthy family – is quite the villain. More animal than human once he gives in to his worst instincts, he’s real and frightening, and of course, and not so subtly showing the “virtue” of the ruling class as a lot of nonsense.
The story setting was also a lot of fun. With echos of Dickens’s own 19th century London woven through the text, Smoke isn’t my favorite of Vyleta’s books, but it was one of my favorite novels of 2018.
words in scarlet ink 