2016 • 585 pages • Headline
Eleanora Mallory is an educated young woman living in
Victorian London but she is restricted by the strict social codes of the late
nineteenth-century. She’s a historian, a suffragette, and is years ahead of her
time much to the chagrin of her male work colleagues at the Public Records
Office. After losing her job and finding a mysterious map abandoned on her
former employer’s desk, Ellie decides to take a chance at an adventure. She
packs her bags and sets off on a journey to Central America, where the map
shows the way to a legendary historical city. It’s the expedition of a life
time, but little does Ellie know that a team of fortune hunters are hot on her
trail.
I do love a good adventure story. Sometimes you just
need to sit down with a book that gives you twists and turns at every opportunity
and The Smoke Hunter definitely achieves that. For a novel of nearly 600 pages
I flew through this surprisingly fast and while there were some parts of the plot
I had a little trouble with this was overall very entertaining.
The
Smoke Hunter runs along the same vein as the Indiana Jones and The Mummy movies – lots of fast paced action with plenty of history
at its core. It was refreshing to read a historical fiction novel set outside
of Europe – it’s lively and exotic and if you’re in the mood for some real
escapism then this ticks all the boxes. Plus, if you like a bit of romance with
your adventure then it’s got that too. Ellie teams up with the smooth talking Adam
Bates, a fellow explorer who also defies society’s rules to live a life of
adventure. Their relationship is fuelled by sarcasm and wit and you know pretty
much where it’s going from the get go, but it’s still a lot of fun and I liked
how they bounced off one another.
As entertaining as it was there was a few things that
really grated on me whilst reading this I think the time period has a lot to do
with it. Ellie is certainly an extremely intelligent and well educated woman
for her time, and she does give her male counterparts a run for their money.
However, there comes a point in the story where the men kind of take over and
Ellie gets shoved to the side lines. I know this is meant to be reflective of
the period but I was a little disappointed with how Ellie started to become a
bit of a spare part while the male characters took charge of everything. Like,
this is her adventure and the men just kind of treat her as though she’s a
piece of spare baggage. She gets called a hysteric at one point which just
ended up just annoying me so for the most part of the middle of the story I was
waiting for Ellie to get her comeback and piss the chauvinists off, which does
happen eventually but good god it seemed to take a while to get there.
I enjoyed this, I won’t say I didn’t because I devoured
a near 600 page novel in three days so there was enough packed in to this to
keep me interested. Sadly with most of the other characters, with the exception
of Adam, I wanted to do nothing more than to teleport in to the story and kick
them in the dick. Being a woman in the late nineteenth century was hard.
Overall rating: 3 stars
My copy of The Smoke Hunter was sent to me by The Bookbag and my original review was published on their website.
Overall rating: 3 stars
My copy of The Smoke Hunter was sent to me by The Bookbag and my original review was published on their website.
