Smoke

Title & buy link: Smoke
Author: Aislinn Kerry
Cover Artist: Trace Edward Zaber
Publisher: Amber Allure
Genre: M/M paranormal historical
Length: Novella (112 pages, approx. 32,000 words)
Rating: 4.25 stars out of 5

A guest review by Leslie S

Review summary: A well written and enjoyable tale about finding salvation, with a nice theological slant to the paranormal part of the book.

Blurb
Loving another man is a sin…but loving a vampire is worse…

In deeply religious 19th-century Italy, Valentino knows that admitting his attraction to men, even to himself, could put him in grave danger. The church prefers to burn vampires to keep their congregation living in fear and paying their tithes, but a sinner like Val would also do in a pinch.

Val suppresses his sexual desires and joins the clergy, hoping to live a life of piety and devotion, until the day Dante, one of the devil’s own vampires, comes to him begging to confess his sins. Val can’t help his attraction to the vampire, and refuses to succumb to it, even as Dante tries to seduce him. But Val soon realizes he can no longer deny the truth of who he is, or what he wants.

In desperation, and putting his life on the line to save the soul of the vampire he loves, Val searches for proof that a man can be a vampire without being damned. But his questions soon attract the church’s attention, and they arrest him, and also plan to make an example of him for the congregation to see.

Will Val face a horrific execution, or will Dante somehow be able to rescue him in time?

Review
First of all I have to say something about the blurb. By the time I got round to reading the book, I’d forgotten what the blurb had said. I started reading and because of certain historical markers in the text and the richness of the language in which it’s written, I was quite happily imagining the book as set during the Italian Renaissance. So I was totally bewildered when I came to add the blurb to this review and saw that the book was set in ‘19th century Italy’. I’m sure this must be a mistake on the publisher’s part, because I’m pretty sure they didn’t burn people in 19th century Italy. Also the book mentions the Officers of the Night, who were established in the early 15th century to track down any Florentine citizen engaging in acts of sodomy (the things you learn when reviewing!), and they were disbanded in 1502. So now I’m confused. Either the blurb is wrong, or if it *is* meant to be an alternate history set in the 19th century, then I wanted much more explanation and worldbuilding in the book as to how and why late medieval/early Renaissance beliefs were still so powerful 400 years later.

Anyway, now I’ve got that off my chest, on with the review.

The book is written in first person from the POV of Valentino, a young man who’s training for the priesthood. His father has disowned him, so the church is Val’s only sanctuary, even though he thinks he won’t make a very good priest. He’s attracted to men, which the church says is a sin, and so Val struggles to find a balance between his faith in God and his natural ‘sinful’ desires.

We first meet Val when he’s sweeping up after the public burning of a vampire. A man enters the church and asks to make his confession, but since Val isn’t a priest yet, all he can do is listen rather than offer absolution. The man, Dante, is actually a vampire seeking to end his life. He thought that by entering a church, he would get struck down by God. Instead he’s still alive and comes to believe that fate brought him to Val.

The two men have a long and passionate conversation about the nature of temptation and sin. In a nice turnaround, after Val has heard Dante’s confession, the demon encourages a confession from the would-be priest. This was an excellent scene, and I really can’t do it justice by paraphrasing here! It’s easily the strongest scene in the book and I enjoyed the clever wordplay and the author’s styling and arrangement of action and dialogue.

Dante asks Val to kill him. Val refuses and asks him to wait until tomorrow so he can ask for guidance from his priest and bishop. But the churchmen decide that a vampire who can walk unscathed into their church is trouble and needs to be made an example of. Val is glad when Dante doesn’t turn up for their meeting; but when they do meet again, in Val’s room, Dante tells him that the vampire recently executed was his lover, Matteo. Dante blames himself for Matteo’s death, hence his own death-wish and need for salvation.

Val still refuses to kill Dante, so Dante decides to make Val undergo continual temptation, so at least they’ll be equal in their suffering. Over the following weeks, they develop a relationship – the temptation turns to trust and friendship. Dante says Val makes him strong; Val says he has faith in Dante’s attempt to be good. They’re bound together by sin – both are sinners in different ways, but both are trying so hard to be good and follow the teachings of the church.

Dante shows Val a life outside of the church, and Val begins to have heretical thoughts. He thinks the church must be wrong, that demons can be good as well as evil, so therefore his own desires can’t be sinful either. Their relationship grows more intense, and Val tries to find theological answers in order to save Dante’s soul – if indeed he has one. The churchmen become suspicious, but Val won’t be stopped. During confession, he challenges the priest – he doesn’t understand why Dante is considered a demon and why he himself should suffer because he loves men – surely God’s mercy is infinite? For this heresy, Val is arrested and condemned to death.

Smoke is a very interesting meditation on questions of original sin and salvation. If a child is born innocent, then if that child is forced to become something wicked through no fault of its own, can it still be saved? This is the question Dante raises. As a vampire, he must continually sin by stealing blood, yet he tries to be good by never killing a human and only taking small amounts of blood from many people. The same question applies to Val, who by nature is gay and therefore just as much of a sinner as Dante. The parallel ‘sins’ are compared and contrasted in an interesting and at times very sexy way, and Val’s struggle to understand Dante and to try to save his soul was the high point of the book for me. Certainly the first third of the story makes for compelling reading because of the intensity of their discussion.

It’s a very internal story, emphasised by the use of first person POV and the fact that most of the action takes place in and around the church. While this internalising is the story’s greatest strength, it’s also a big weakness. When I was reading it, I was really caught up in the moment, but as soon as I’d finished the book, I was left feeling a bit disappointed because of the lack of external descriptions. The story is set in Florence, yet I never got a sense of place. I couldn’t even picture the rectory where Val lived. It was like watching a TV show filmed in extreme close up – totally immersive at the time of watching, but very disorientating afterwards.

I had a few more niggles. I’ve already mentioned the problems caused by the blurb and how the lack of worldbuilding compounded that issue, and related to that complaint is the use of the word ‘okay’. The rest of the book is written in a lovely rich language that makes it feel like a historical, so suddenly seeing ‘okay’ pop up (and in a very pivotal scene!) pulled me right out of the story.

Also, the ending didn’t match the rest of the book. After the slow build elsewhere, the ending felt rushed and the action sequences didn’t work as well as the more thoughtful dialogue-driven scenes. The rest of the book is well paced and very readable, but the last few pages just sort of faded for me, which was a shame when the rest of it was so strong.

Despite these issues, I liked the themes and underlying message of the book, how you can only be responsible for yourself and that salvation and acceptance comes not from other people or an ‘external source’ like God but from within. It’s a quietly intelligent book that doesn’t hit you over the head with a moral message, yet it deals with moral questions that can be read as metaphors for dealing with prejudice and fear today.

I have to admit, the business with the blurb really threw me, and although I enjoyed the book, I’m left with a sense of vague puzzlement because I don’t know if it’s an alternate history of the Renaissance or an alternate history of the 19th century. If it’s the former, I can rest easy and I’d rate the book as 4.5 stars; if it’s the latter, then I’m missing a lot of worldbuilding and would rate the book as 4 stars. To be fair, I’m giving it 4.25 stars. Other readers probably wouldn’t care less about this aspect, but it’s really bugging me! So to conclude: well written with engaging characters, great sex scenes and an interesting theological debate, but it lacked a sense of time and place.