Bright Smoke, Cold Fire ~ Rosamund Hodge (Bright Smoke, Cold Fire #1)
★★★☆☆
The world was dying, and death did not care who mourned.
This was such a disappointment. I'd heard it wasn't as good as Cruel Beauty, which was one of my faves last year, but I didn't think it would be this...meh.
I guess I should also say that I don't particularly care for Romeo and Juliet to begin with.
The Writing and Worldbuilding
The writing was okay. The dialogue felt unnatural for the most part; half direct Shakespeare quotes, half incongruously modern-sounding speech. Juliet's dialogue was particularly bad. Mostly because she was always saying things without emotion. So she basically never expressed any emotion that wasn't righteous indignation. But more on that in a bit.
The two different plotlines worked for the most part, but for half the book, I didn't care about Paris's whatsoever while liking Paris himself, and was very intrigued by Runajo's but hated her guts. Paris's story got more interesting as time went on, but unfortunately, it kind of traded places with Runajo's, and left hers a convoluted mess. And the pacing of the emotional journey was truly dreadful. The exact same story beat would play out one chapter after another in each of the plots. In one chapter, Runajo realized she actually thought of Juliet as a friend and didn't want her to die. In the next, Paris realized he actually thought of Romeo as a friend and didn't want him to die. A little variation or at least some more time between these chapters would have been so much better. And a reason for any of these characters to like each other would have also been nice.
The world was cool, but so much of it is told to me through mindless exposition that I retained little of it and was scrambling later on to make sense of anything. Some set-pieces were atmospheric, especially the Sunken Library, but most were white rooms. The zombies were okay, but barely a threat; and the reapers were sort of cool, but lacked presence. I like necromancer stories, but this just felt generic. And I was so confused about what anyone looked like, even though it was said all the time. What culture was this world based on, because the terms all sound Indian to me but then some characters are blonde? It isn't that important to me, but it still took me out of the story, because to me, every character looked exactly the same and I had such a hard time imagining any of them, so I mostly just used a placeholder character in my mind. It was a struggle.
The Characters
Juliet, the robot girl, just wanders around, scowling and threatening to kill people the entire book, contributing little to the plot. She has no personality to speak of and the most unconvincing of love stories (which is hilarious, because it's literally based on Romeo and Juliet, the quintessential love story). Why anyone would fall in love with her, let alone the hopeless romantic that is Romeo, is beyond me.
Runajo, on the other hand, has too much personality. She's insufferable, rude, and a straight-up b the entire book. She judges literally everyone for the most shallow of reasons, has zero compassion, and is generally selfish, with no redeeming qualities. I hated her! The protagonist of Cruel Beauty had her issues, but she wasn't altogether the worst! Her faults made me like her even more, not make me want to slap her.
Paris was the only character I genuinely liked, and he sometimes got on my nerves as well. I appreciated his cowardice because it made him more real, but honestly, when the main antagonist points out that he supposedly trained for his whole life to be a Guardian and yet he sucks at fighting (except for when the plot needs him to be good, apparently), you know something is wrong.
I initially didn't like Romeo. He was annoying and boring, but he grew on me. He was sort of a cinnamon roll, so I liked him enough. But he and Paris have basically the same way of speaking, so sometimes I got lost in their conversations trying to figure out who was saying what.
All the other characters were ok. I liked Vai. The antagonists felt generic, but the main villain seems promising, so hopefully the next book is better.
Conclusion
This is being compared to Sabriel, and first of all, how dare you? Second of all, if anything, it copies more from Lirael, but cut out all the charm.
Also, what the heck is the title supposed to mean? Because I've read the entire book and I couldn't tell you.
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