Smoke In The Sun by Renée Adieh Review
This was a dreadful book. I appreciate what Renée was trying to do, but it just fell really really flat for me. Unlike 'Flame In The Mist', which despite all it's flaws was a quick and enjoyable read, this unfortunately still had all the flaws but none of the fun reading!
In this book Mariko is still a dry and unbuttered piece of toast - tasteless. She's so exceptionally dumb and she doesn't really do much in this book - not that I can remember anyway. At the end of the last book she decides to go with her lover to the capitol to help save him and their whole crew by working from the inside or something - honestly my memory is a little rusty because I've tried to block that book from my mind. But really, she's fucking useless again. She does absolutely nothing that furthers the plot which is weird for the main protagonist? And I feel like all she does is wallow in her own misery and then be outsmarted by everyone again, no matter that she's meant to be incredibly intuitive and intelligent.
I'm not even going to bother talking about the love story in this book because I honestly don't get it, Mariko and what's his face are dull together - you know it's bad when you can't even remember the main love interest's name. There is absolutely no chemistry between them in this book and I just don't get why they're meant to be in love with each other.
One of the most disappointing things about this book though was that it could have had such great characters. Raiden and Kenshin are complex and interesting but Renée just kinda glosses over their character development and their arcs. They both could have made this book really interesting but Kenshin was largely ignored and just there to be some bad character in the background, and Raiden should have been the protagonist we focused on in this sequel but he somehow wasn't.
As well as this Renée just neglects characters by not featuring them at all. Despite her introdutcion in the first book and a short story about her that I haven't read, there is no Yumi in this book really, which is kinda disappointed because if written right and well she could have been the female protagonist we all deserved. As well as that, Renée spent a large portion of the first book flushing out the characters of the black clan and their relationships and then just didn't feature them in this book, like at all. They were just not there for some reason. It didn't make any sense, and I'm not sure what the point in the introduction of these characters and the previous focus on them was for then.
As well as this why are the villains so bad? At the end of the first book I thought there was a bit of hope because we were introduced to Kanako, a villain that should have been exciting and interesting, but she wasn't. She was bland and kinda boring and everything she did she just felt a bit 'meh'. And then we get another villain in the form of Roku who could have been great, like Azula from ATLA great, but he was a cardboard copy cut out of a villain. It was like Renée just copy and pasted the form for a children's show villain onto him and called it a day. Even the villainous and bad deeds done in this book don't feel that horrific, all the torturing that is done here just doesn't hit in the right way - none of it is sad or invokes any feeling in the readers to be honest.
Now, a huge problem with this book was the plotting and pacing! My god, how the fuck did she mess this up so bad!! The first 300 pages of the book dragged, and I mean dragged - nothing happened. It was so dull. I can't tell you any plot points from the first three hundred pages because no one did anything, nothing interesting happened and honestly I think you could skip it. But oh boy the last quarter of this book was a rush. I don't know how Renée did this but she made all the development with the characters and plots happen in the last quarter of this book, so it felt incredible rushed and none of the arcs were fully flushed out. It left me incredibly dissatisfied as it finally got interesting and then about two books worth of arc for characters and plot was just squeezed in there. It just made no sense, it kinda felt like Renée was sick of writing her own book and just kinda went 'fuck it' and finished it as fast as she could.
Another huge problem for me, personally, is the writing style in this. Whilst I understand how some people could enjoy this, Renée's 'poetic prose' did absolutely nothing for me. I foolishly hoped going into this second book Renée would have cooled it on the attempts to introduce 'complex' metaphors and poetic language but nope! Still just as bad. Not that this book was any good, but if it had been that kind of writing style can be really distracting and take away form the actual narrative. Here is my favourite example of 'what the fuck Renée':
'it was the kind of song one heard if one knew how to listen' - what the everloving fuck does this mean Renée?
In my last review I also talked about how Renee's book lacked any sense of world-building, and I how I hope we'd see more in this sequel. And guess what? We didn't get any! It still have no idea about any of the magic in this book and how it came to be, it's still just as confusing as it was in the first book.
Something I want to mention but not talk about is there a lot of reviewers saying for a book that's meant to be historical fiction based on Japan, this wasn't done well. You can find these reviews all over Goodreads if you want to have a look, and I'm not going to comment because I'm white and British and not educated enough to talk on that topic; but it's a really interesting point and something we should be paying attention to.
This is not good. It fell flat on pretty much everything, I can't name a feature of this book that was done well, and that's a huge problem. I honestly think if you're going to read this you should just skip the first 300 pages and read the last bit because that's when everything happens anyway, or better yet just don't read it, it's honestly a waste of time.
As well as this Renée just neglects characters by not featuring them at all. Despite her introdutcion in the first book and a short story about her that I haven't read, there is no Yumi in this book really, which is kinda disappointed because if written right and well she could have been the female protagonist we all deserved. As well as that, Renée spent a large portion of the first book flushing out the characters of the black clan and their relationships and then just didn't feature them in this book, like at all. They were just not there for some reason. It didn't make any sense, and I'm not sure what the point in the introduction of these characters and the previous focus on them was for then.
As well as this why are the villains so bad? At the end of the first book I thought there was a bit of hope because we were introduced to Kanako, a villain that should have been exciting and interesting, but she wasn't. She was bland and kinda boring and everything she did she just felt a bit 'meh'. And then we get another villain in the form of Roku who could have been great, like Azula from ATLA great, but he was a cardboard copy cut out of a villain. It was like Renée just copy and pasted the form for a children's show villain onto him and called it a day. Even the villainous and bad deeds done in this book don't feel that horrific, all the torturing that is done here just doesn't hit in the right way - none of it is sad or invokes any feeling in the readers to be honest.
Now, a huge problem with this book was the plotting and pacing! My god, how the fuck did she mess this up so bad!! The first 300 pages of the book dragged, and I mean dragged - nothing happened. It was so dull. I can't tell you any plot points from the first three hundred pages because no one did anything, nothing interesting happened and honestly I think you could skip it. But oh boy the last quarter of this book was a rush. I don't know how Renée did this but she made all the development with the characters and plots happen in the last quarter of this book, so it felt incredible rushed and none of the arcs were fully flushed out. It left me incredibly dissatisfied as it finally got interesting and then about two books worth of arc for characters and plot was just squeezed in there. It just made no sense, it kinda felt like Renée was sick of writing her own book and just kinda went 'fuck it' and finished it as fast as she could.
'it was the kind of song one heard if one knew how to listen' - what the everloving fuck does this mean Renée?
In my last review I also talked about how Renee's book lacked any sense of world-building, and I how I hope we'd see more in this sequel. And guess what? We didn't get any! It still have no idea about any of the magic in this book and how it came to be, it's still just as confusing as it was in the first book.
Something I want to mention but not talk about is there a lot of reviewers saying for a book that's meant to be historical fiction based on Japan, this wasn't done well. You can find these reviews all over Goodreads if you want to have a look, and I'm not going to comment because I'm white and British and not educated enough to talk on that topic; but it's a really interesting point and something we should be paying attention to.
This is not good. It fell flat on pretty much everything, I can't name a feature of this book that was done well, and that's a huge problem. I honestly think if you're going to read this you should just skip the first 300 pages and read the last bit because that's when everything happens anyway, or better yet just don't read it, it's honestly a waste of time.
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| My British ass @ this book |
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