Instead, which I found very effective, she chooses to let the reader fill in the blanks by describing the reactions of the witnesses around these horrific acts.
She has enough respect for her victims not to become too graphic with the imagery, and I believe that says a lot for her as a writer. For me, Adieh got the line right between enough description to raise the tension and the stakes, without making the details pornographic in their horror. Children are killed or tortured, people are branded, murdered. I found things got dark very quickly in this book, and although Adieh handles it with a light touch it’s still very bleak. Is the new emperor mad, or is he justified in the way he handles potential threats? Is Mariko’s betrothed as cruel as his brother, or just misguided? Can Mariko trust anyone? While Flame in the Mist was essentially a novel of the training montage from Mulan with added romance storyline thrown in, and a bit of extra magic for flavour, Smoke in the Sun becomes a political thriller set within the court. It seemed that all that had been cut out was travelling time from the final scene back to the royal palace for the start of the next stage of the story.Īs you would expect, the structure and focus of this is different from the first. Things ended on a bit of a cliffhanger with book one, and book two naturally picked up almost immediately afterwards. The star-crossed romance, the outlaws-vs-aristocrats narrative – all the perfect holiday read. I very much wanted to plough straight into this book after finishing Flame in the Mist, but I made myself hold off until my holiday, as I knew the tone and story would be exactly the sort of thing I wanted to read while I sunned myself on the beach. But each secret she unfurls gives way to the next, ensnaring Mariko and Okami in a political scheme that threatens their honor, their love and very the safety of the empire. With the wedding plans already underway, Mariko pretends to be consumed with her upcoming nuptials, all the while using her royal standing to peel back the layers of lies and deception surrounding the imperial court. She tricks her brother, Kenshin, and betrothed, Raiden, into thinking she was being held by the Black Clan against her will, playing the part of the dutiful bride-to-be to infiltrate the emperor’s ranks and uncover the truth behind the betrayal that almost left her dead. Genre: Historical fantasy, high fantasy, YAĪfter Okami is captured in the Jukai forest, Mariko has no choice – to rescue him, she must return to Inako and face the dangers that have been waiting for her in the Heian Castle.
Author: Renée Ahdieh ( website / twitter)
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