Soot
-
- £1.99
-
- £1.99
Publisher Description
Welcome to a world where every desire is visible, rising from the body as a plume of Smoke. A world where bodies speak to one another and infect each other with desire, anger, greed. It is 1909 and this world stands on a precipice - some celebrate this constant whisper of skin to skin, and some seek to silence it forever.
Enter Eleanor, a young woman with a strange power over Smoke and niece of the Lord Protector of England. Running from her uncle and home, she finds shelter in a New York theatre troupe.
Then Nil, a thief hiding behind a self-effacing name. He's an orphan snatched from a jungle-home and suspects that a clue to his origins may lie hidden in the vaults of the mighty, newly-risen East India Company.
And finally Thomas, one of the three people to release Smoke into the world. On a clandestine mission to India, he hopes to uncover the origins of Smoke and lay to rest his doubts about what he helped to unleash.
In a story that crosses continents - from India to England's Minetowns - these three seek to control the power of Smoke. As their destinies entwine, a cataclysmic confrontation looms: the Smoke will either bind them together or forever rend the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vyleta returns to the blackened streets of the late-Victorian-era dystopia introduced in Smoke in this ambitious but overlong sequel. In the first book, Smoke a physical manifestation of thoughts that causes black clouds to emanate from the skin when a person is feeling strong emotions was released in an attempt to create an equal society; however, the rich conspired to purge themselves of this new way to mingle emotions. Now, 10 years after Smoke was released, Vyleta's narrative moves beyond Britain, jumping between the story of Eleanor Renfrew, the niece of the Lord Protector of England, as she hides from her power-hungry uncle in Canada with a Smoke-powered acting troupe, and Mowgli, whose body was used to unleash Smoke on the world, as he scrapes by as a thief in New York City under his new moniker, "Nil." When Eleanor believes her uncle has found her, she flees to New York with the performing troupe of Balthazar Black. There she meets Nil, as well as a mysterious agent from the Machiavellian Company named Smith, and a beetle that seems to possess strange qualities. This band of misfits believe they have figured out ways to control Smoke and return to England for the final confrontation with the Lord Protector. Vyleta's bold vision of a society controlled by dark emotions looms large in this stunning, if long-winded, conclusion to a remarkably inventive tale.
