Smoke and Shadows - Tanya Huff

[louiselux]

Weirdly, there were a number of punctuation typos in this book, particularly towards the end. Full stops instead of commas, odd things like that. Various people have recommended Tanya Huff to me before, but I kept picking up her novels in bookshops, thinking 'am I really going to enjoy this?' then putting them back down. But this one sold me on having Tony the gay production assistant working on a show about a vampire detective. Coincidentally, Tony's ex is an actual vampire detective, called Henry. Who is the bastard son of Henry VIII.

So, plot ensues, with an evil wizard from another world who sends his evil shadow minions to attack the special effects person on the show, who also happens to be a wizard and his enemy. Tony and Henry get sucked into it.

The plot is very frothy and camp and I enjoyed it. It clunked in some places, mostly where exposition was necessary to explain character backgrounds (this book is linked to a whole series of other books featuring some of the same characters). There are also a couple of charming fandom jokes: the second lead on the vampire detective show is called Lee Nicholas, and has green eyes an dark hair, and when Tony and Arra are in the car driving somewhere, the only tape in the car is The Best of Queen, Vol 1.

Tanya Huff does a nice line in cracktastic scenarios. This isn't a book to blow you away, but it's amusing and intriguing, and has some nice observations that bring her characters to life.

Comments

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

:snerk: Henry's last name isn't Fitzroy, is it? What, me? History geek? nahhhhhh.

[jamjar.livejournal.com]

I'm quite fond of Tanya Huff, though I like her space trooper ones more, a couple of her fantasy ones enough to buy and keep on my shelves, and disliked a few of her Summoning ones.

Can I tempt you to join us on Good Reads (http://www.goodreads.com)? It's ever so shiny and easy to use.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I actually prefer the Smoke series to the Blood series.

My favorite fantasy novels of Huff's are Fire's Stone and Fifth Quarter. Summon the Keeper is a fun, humorous magic-working-in-our-world book but its sequels are of diminishing quality.