Customer Reviews

The Smoke Thief

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are some truly beautiful scenes in this book, heartsweeping imagery and prosaic bursts of writing that can make any literary person jealous. The concept of human to smoke to dragon is amazing, and the writhing and shimmering and beauteous descriptions of these experiences make you SO want to adore the book. But I didn't like the hero. He is a bit a of a jerk, and irredeemably so. He lies to the heroine until the very last pages, which is a no-no for me. Also, the reader is very much kept in the dark about /everyone's/ true motivations and plans, which, when they pop up without lead-up or foreshadowing later on, leave you thinking 'what the heck?!' and not in a good way. Much of the plot is aimless, with strange spots of conversation and events that seem to add nothing to the story. The heroine is desperately unhappy, until the hero has sex with her, and then, suddenly, she is okay with being unhappy. **spoilers** I wondered what kind of daughter would let her ailing mother believe she was dead, even if only for a few days. How could she just LEAVE her without consulting with her? She seemed selfish, over and over again. Like other readers, I felt that Rue escaping dragon-land simply because she didn't want to (maybe eventually) marry the man she had crushed on her whole life to be lame. Zane was a strange character, who sometimes was a boy and sometimes was a man, whereas the other runner came from nowhere. He seemed almost thrown in to add a few more pages to the story. Lastly, Kit spent a lot of time being a spoiled, entitled jerk. There was no development in him, until the last pages when they just kind of laugh off all the horrors they brought to each others' lives and then have hard, loveless sex. Lastly, the names (Rue and Kit) were so un-flattering and gender neutral that I kept having to go back and remind myself which was the man and which was the woman. Strange.

I have found The Smoke Thief to be very well written as well as extraordinary fiction. The idea of humans turning to smoke, than dragons, and back again just tickles the imagination. I love all things paranormal and have read a lot of them but none has captured my attention quite as quickly as this one, from the first page to the last. I totaly agree with Jane Feather's blurb on the front cover, and that is that "Shana Abe has a rare magic" and the magic continues with it's sequel, The Dream Thief. I can hardly wait to get my hands on the 3rd book of the series, coming out next January, this is one I'm not going to miss (it promises to be as enchanting as the first two)!