Smoke

Smoke by Dan Vyleta        448 pages   (due out May, 2016)  

"The laws of Smoke are complex. Not every lie will trigger it. A fleeting thought of evil may pass unseen; a fib, an excuse, a piece of flattery. Next thing you know its smell is in your nose. There is no more hateful smell in the world than the smell of Smoke."

In an imagined version of England, people who are wicked in thought and deed are marked by Smoke which pours forth from their bodies.  If you are a virtuous person, or a member of the aristocracy, you never Smoke (or do you?).   Three young people at an elite boarding school soon learn that everything they have been taught is a lie, putting their lives in danger.  Pursuing the truth, they discover secrets in attic rooms, in London, and in the relationships between daughter and mother, father and son.

This is an absolutely beautifully written book.  It's intense, and imaginative, and complex.   I found I would read a paragraph and then go back and savor it, because it was so thought-provoking or written in such a way that I wanted to linger over it.   I really enjoyed this book, and found that even though there were complexities in the plot, that I became immersed in the story.   Starting off, and learning about the rules of Smoke, it's complicated.  The fact that some people can lie and not trigger it at all, while others have a single thought and give themselves away lends an interesting element to the story.  So, the rules we are given are changeable, and this becomes more evident as the story progresses.

The setting, of an alternate-feeling London, lent itself well to the story.  Anyone familiar with the great smogs of London can easily imagine the London in this story.   The one thing that I occasionally found confusing was that you get viewpoints from many characters, and I would sometimes need to go back and figure out just who someone was (and how they might relate to another character).

The writing is descriptive, and the tone is atmospheric.  Similar authors that came to my mind were Neil Gaiman (although his stories aren't always quite this dark) and China Mieville (especially in the beautiful use of the written word).   Certain phrases also made me think of Ray Bradbury, who I often felt was a real artist in how he could craft a sentence or phrase.  

Here's an example: "The laws of Smoke are complex. Not every lie will trigger it.  A fleeting thought of evil may pass unseen; a fib, an excuse, a piece of flattery.  Sometimes you can lie quite outrageously and find yourself spared...At other times, the Smoke is conjured by transgressions so trifling you are hardly aware of them at all... There is no more hateful smell in the world than the smell of Smoke."  (p. 17)

This is the kind of dark tale that I enjoy, where it sticks in my mind and I keep coming back to it (and then want to re-read it again).


Note: I read an e-galley of this book, courtesy of Edelweiss.   A copy of this book has been ordered for the Library's collection in the Center for the Reader.