It's England 100 years or so ago but not the England that we know. Now when people sin, their body lets go of the smoke. The deeper and darker the sin, the deeper and darker the smoke that the body exhales from every pore. You can smoke in your sleep and if you are part of the wealthy and elite, you will wake in the morning and check your bedclothes for evidence of sin in your dreams. This is the world that Thomas and Charlie live in at their boarding school. Thomas who seems to constantly be smoking almost as much as he breathes and Charlie who barely ever seems to do anything that could be considered even the slightest of sins. They are an unlikely pair but a friendship has formed so when it is suggested that Charlie accompany Thomas on holiday where he has been invited by an extremely influential family, of course he goes.
That's where they meet Lady Naylor and her daughter. That's where Thomas starts learning more about smoke and where it comes from and how the elite use a special sweet to trap their own smoke to look more pure and a special cigarette that allows them to feel the effects of stronger smoke for a brief time. That's where everything changes and Tom, Charlie, and Livia end up becoming fugitives trying to figure out what Lady Naylor's end game really is. They could never have imagined what she has planned if they hadn't seen it for themselves.
It's been a few days and I still don't know quite how I feel about this book. Some of the concepts were interesting but I didn't feel like there was enough explanation to satisfy all the questions I had about the Smoke and how it worked. It seemed to be plot driven more than any specific set of laws. Motives for everyone felt fairly weak and the story moved but didn't seem to go anywhere really. The deeper explanations into personal behavior and motivation that it kept dancing around were what it seemed like it wanted to be about never materialized, instead staying to the outside like vague wisps of smoke when a fire is smoldering but never going to actually catch. That is the story that I thought it was going to tell and the one that would have really interested me but I kept reading and waiting and it just never happened. I guess I can say that this is a book that I read. I didn't hate it but I also didn't see a whole lot of point to it.
Page count: 448p/5,920p ytd/297,941p lifetime
No comments:
Post a Comment