Truth in the Smoke
I was prepared, reluctantly to give this book five stars, until the very end and then without warning it went from brilliant to ordinary.
The concept of this story is pure brilliance. A central character who has powers and skills that are completely unknown. Even the character’s personal history is a shadowed landscape of ifs and buts. The plot skillfully reveals the strange nature of the character’s gifts while not telegraphing the real problem.
The supporting characters are strong and well-made, which is particularly challenging while trying to keep the big secret safe. Special notice to both the villain and the guide characters. The champion of any story can only be as heroic as the villain allows them to be and this tale has a jimdandy bad antagonist. Lethal enough to be threatening and yet not so broadly drawn as to become a melodrama cur, with twirling mustaches.
The guide also gets good marks for being solid while not taking the thrust of the story away from the central character, as they manage to be protective, reluctant, passionate, withdrawn, and mysterious and yet available. Good trick if you can pull it off.
There is a secondary character or two which are so strong they beg for a storyline of their own. Something the writer may intend in future tales.
The flow of the story is incredibly smooth from start to almost finish, with no plot holes or odd changes to distract the reader. There are a few, very few, spots where a word is too large for the rest of the story but even that isn’t enough to break the pace of the read.
In fact, with the embedded breadcrumbs this was very nearly a perfect story. There are plenty of hints within the structure of the tale to make the reader desperate for the next adventure.
This would easily have been a five-star book save for the clumsy and frankly poor non-ending. Why the writer decided there was a need for such an abrupt and awkward stop to the story is a question for another setting.
Read the book, it is well worth the time, but hold out hope that the writer gets the next book to actually come to an end.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.