Book Review - Alexis Hall's Smoke and Ashes
Published by: Carina Press
Publication Date: November 12th, 2020
Format: Kindle, 332 Pages
Rating: ★
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About three years ago, shit has it been three years? Kate Kane's life went to hell. Technically literally, but that's another story. Her life was saved but in the process it also fell apart. She was betrayed by her girlfriend, Julian Saint-Germain, once again proving you can never trust vampires, and her best friend, Elise, was turned back into a statue. But the worst fate belonged to her ex Nimue, who lost half her face in the battle for the very soul of London and now lies in a coma. Since then Kate's done exactly what you'd expect her to do, drunkenly wallow. Although the thread count of the sheets in the bed she's been wallowing in have gone drastically up since she started banging Tara Vane-Tempest. Posh werewolves really do have a nice life. Although this posh werewolf is even starting to question Kate's life plan. One can't stay in bed forever drunk. Of course when Kate does get out of Tara's bed she often ends up in someone else's... Which she's not sure if Tara is OK with. But Kate's life is a train wreck so what does it matter if she destroys the one kind of good thing in it? Though things are about to change. Not for the better. The werewolves have been attacked. One was skinned. The perpetrator has links to Kate, links she'd rather not think about because the attacker happens to be the vampire that sired Patrick, her intolerable ex who is still listening to "Clair de Lune" on repeat. Her arrival would be problematic enough if she hadn't teamed up with the vampire who almost killed Kate three years previously, Sebastian Douglas, who has allied himself with the Queen of Winter, the King of Shadows. This is a clusterfuck of vengeance coming right for Kate and those few people she still tries to care about even if she's kind of lost touch with them. But Kate knows things are really about to kick off when her prophetic dreams return. The green lady who is and isn't Nimue tells Kate that all that is wrong is because Nim's life is in the balance. She needs to be killed or restored so that London can recover. Of course Kate doesn't want Nim to die, which means she has to find the Holy Grail. Yes, THAT Holy Grail.
How would I describe Smoke and Ashes? A damn stupid interminable vision quest without an actual ending. This volume, and to an extent the previous volume, seem to be prologue to whatever is coming in the final volume, Time and Tide, which is now two years overdue. Not that I actually care. Other than if the final volume was out I could read it and then never look back. Because all that I mildly enjoyed in this series has been slowly stripped away. The narrowing of focus has made this nothing more than bad King Arthur fanfic. And I like King Arthur fanfic, my love of Merlin, both the campy BBC series and the Sam Neill miniseries, should be enough to prove my bona fides. But I can't stand this. This stripping down of characters, this myopic drunken vision quest. If you would have told me I'd react so strongly to the removal of a Pudding Nun and Pygmalion I would have laughed at you. And I would have been so so wrong. And yes, I know Pygmalion was the sculptor, it just has such a nice alliterative ring that I couldn't pass it up. Taking away the most "memorable" characters has been tantamount to suicide. The supposed three years since the events of the previous book has seen Kate become a committed drunken whore. Which proves to me, time and again, that the main problem with this whole series is it's star, Kate Kane. And this volume really let me get to the heart of why I hate here. Kate is an immature ass. Literally. She has no emotional maturity. I mean, this could have something to do with Patrick and her traumatic teens, that somehow her development has been stunted at a time in her life where she wasn't fully formed and instead of dealing with the trauma she has created a persona versus a personality. But this might just be me trying to justify her being drunk in Tara's bed for three years. Because Kate is what an ill-informed teenager would think a PI is, a drunk who bangs the dames. Yes, I guess this could be a valid life choice, but it's so damn depressing and nihilistic. Kate's always assumed she'd die young so she doesn't bother to work on herself, she doesn't actually try, she's willing to stay childish, even needing bedtime stories. She stumbles around when she has to, but really, if you think about all her actions, they are really only reactions. I want to smack her and tell to grow the fuck up. But I really don't think that would help, she knows how to take a punch.
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