Smoke and Shadows (The Smoke Trilogy, Book 1) Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm a pretty big fan of Tanya Huff's work, including the Blood series. Tony, however, is not a particularly strong protagonist. He works on a cheesy TV show about vampires -- if you're interested in television production, perhaps you can get some mileage there. I didn't. It was fun watching Tony grow up in the background of the Blood books, but as a main character, he's pretty dull (especially for somebody with a supposedly colorful street-kid police-informant vampire-lover past).
On a bit of a tangent, it's never a good sign when somebody in a vampire novel comments that "Buffy" vampires are less scary than "the real thing." In the previous Blood books, the exact time (and its exact relationship to our reality) has been a little vague, and it worked well that way. The all-too-hip specificity is jarring and feels forced. Besides, Huff has done many intriguing things, but she's never really made scary vampires. Sure, we've been *told* that Vampires are Scary, but we've never been shown them doing anything truly frightening. We're told that when the "civlized mask" slips and "the Hunger" shows, people nearby will lose bladder control in terror -- but we never feel it.
The other emotion that doesn't seem to come through well in Huff's writing is lust, so Tony's crushes (and his relationship with Henry, his vampiric ex) aren't all that compelling either. The plot never had me all that worried about the fate of the earth, or even the fate of Tony. Without the lively characters and complex relationships of Huff's other books, there's not a lot left to enjoy. It's particularly unfortunate that this book is where Huff made the jump to hardcover; this story just is not worth hardcover prices. If the Vicki and Henry Show is over, Celluci would have made a more interesting new protagonist than Tony.

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