The Smoke Thieves

Our Review

The Smoke Thieves by Sally Green is quite a hard book for me to review and was hard for me to give a score to. On the one hand this was exactly the kind of book I love to read, and I had guessed that from the blurb but on the other hand there was only one character whose tale I loved.

The Smoke Thieves is a split-narrative story told from the perspective of five characters: a hunter, a thief, a princess, a soldier and a traitor. The only perspective that really gripped me was that of Tash, a thirteen-year-old demon hunter and trader of an illegal substance named demon smoke. I stopped reading the other stories by about 7% of the way through.

If another character’s story had been the first chapter of the book, then I think I would have not even managed to get to Tash’s story but as it was hers was the only story I read right to the end. Her story reminded me strongly of The Demon Cycle Series by Peter. V. Brett.

Tash and her friend and guardian Gravell travel around trapping demons and killing them for colourful smoke they emit as they die. Tash notices that Gravell always gets snappy before they are about to try to trap a demon. When she confronts him Gravell denies any nerves.

“Why should I be nervous? You’re the one it’ll catch first. By the time it’s done with you I’ll be long gone.” It was true of course. Tash was the bait. She lured the demon into the trap and Gravell finished it off.

Gravell bought Tash off her family four years earlier to be demon bait for him because he needed a fast runner. Her father was only to happy to sell her and she was only too happy to find a new family in Gravell because despite the occasional discomfort at least he never beat her or made her go hungry.

The selling of demon smoke tends to be ignored by the sherif's men and can be profitable but all that changes one day when someone steals one of their jars of it and others become aware of the potential uses for the smoke.

Tash’s story is one that would have scored quite well if it was on its own, but I have to take it as a whole with the other characters and those were just not interesting to me. Catherine’s story in particular struck me as cliché and predictable.

I don’t know what to say about The Smoke Thieves except if you decide to read it maybe it is best to stick to Tash’s chapters like I did.

Our Final Rating...

Sun, 29th April 2018