Smoke and Ashes

by Tanya Huff

Paperback, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

Fic SF Huff

Publication

New York Daw 2007

Description

Fantasy. Fiction. Mystery. HTML:Tanya Huff�s supernatural fantasy Smoke series, with a gothic twist � Mix of ghostly mystery, paranormal horror, and dark humor � Lamba Award nominated Fans of the X-Files and Twin Peaks will love acclaimed master of contemporary fantasy Tanya Huff�s twisted version of vampires, wizards, and TV terror. Tony Foster, fledgling wizard and now trainee assistant director on Darkest Night�the syndicated vampire detective show�is hoping that they only supernatural events he�ll be caught up in are those in the script. But that isn�t meant to be, for a demonic convergence is about to begin, creating weak spots through which lesser demons may enter the world. To complicate matters, Leah, the incredibly seductive stuntwoman who freelances for the show, is an immortal Demongate. Should Leah die, the Demongate will open and her sensual demon master will wreak havoc upon the unsuspecting human race. Can Tony�with the help of Leah, Henry, a tabloid reporter, a Mountie, and the cast of Darkest Night�halt a demonic invasion and stave off the end of the world?… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member callmecayce

This is the final book in Huff's Smoke series and the series just kept getting better. This book was fantastic in all the best ways. All of the characters, including some new ones, were entertaining and fun. Leah is a great, snarky and yet caring addition to the story. Tony and Lee have hilarious

and tense chemistry and Tony's other friends? Just great. I also love how Huff makes sure her continuity flows properly, Tony understands that the experiences in the previous books (and the Blood series) have a lasting affect on himself and his friends (including Henry). Something I wasn't sure I'd enjoy, but surprisingly did, was the fact that the focus of the books isn't Henry. His importance to the story and plot is definitely important, but it is not the central focus, unlike the first book of the series and all the Blood books. I think this is brilliant on Huff's part, because it gives Tony a sense of conflict, but it doesn't drench us in vampire lore. Also, the books are very hip and culturally appropriate and hilarious. I wish there were more! While I knew Tony was a great character in the Blood books, I had no idea how much I'd come to love him in this series. It's lots of fun and definitely not your run of the mill vampire series.

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LibraryThing member veevoxvoom

Tony Foster and the cast and crew of the TV show Darkest Night are back in this final book of the Smoke trilogy. This time, a stuntwoman named Leah shows up on set and Tony finds out that she’s the immortal handmaiden of a god trying to break out of hell. In order to stop the god, and the chaos

the god will wreak on earth, she needs Tony’s help. Of course, saving the world isn’t the only thing Tony has to deal with. There’s also filming another episode of the show, and the unresolved sexual tension between Tony and the actor Lee.

Smoke and Ashes continues the tradition of the first two Smoke books. It’s witty and fun, full of pop culture references and tongue-in-cheek humour. The characters are a veritable scooby gang, their personalities mashing together as they work to help Tony. None of it is very serious, despite the impending doom, but I don’t read these books to be serious. They’re like the extra chocolate bar you sneak even though you’re supposed to be on a diet. Slightly trashy but you want it anyway.

I didn’t think Smoke and Ashes was as good as Smoke and Mirrors because it lacked the pitch-perfect atmosphere, but I liked it better than Smoke and Shadows. One shining feature is that the storyline between Tony and Lee gets wrapped up. It was a little too quickly done, in my opinion. I would have liked to have seen more meaningful interaction between them, but that’s not to say I’m unhappy with what I got instead. Which sums up my entire attitude towards this trilogy: imperfect and at times overly fluffy, but I like it.

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LibraryThing member reannon

Now this is more like it. I wasn't that fond of the second book in this series, but with this third book Huff is back to work that I really like. I don't think the second one was a bad book, but just not my kind of thing. This one reminds me of why I'm so fond of Huff as a writer... she creates

great characters and good plots. She doesn't cheat. Her books always have a logical consistency. For example, her Blood book (the Vicky Nelson series) that dealt with werewolves created a werewolf pack that combined human and wolf social structure that made sense.

In this volume, the main character, Tony Foster, gets caught up with a 3500 year-old woman who currently works as a stunt woman. She's immortal because a demon made her that way. The demon seems to be trying to use her to come through to this world from his own dimension, and Tony and the stunt woman have to stop him from sending demons through and causing the end of the world..

Lots of fun.

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LibraryThing member silentq

More repressed gay love! :) Tony's still working on the Darkest Night tv show and this time he runs into an immortal stuntwoman and a horde of demons. Reading this after Kushiel's Scion showed up the fluffiness of the plot and writing, but it was still enjoyable. Tony seems to be growing up a bit

more as the books progress, and Henry and Vicki also made short appearances. Lee seems to be coming to terms with his feelings for Tony as well. Next book soon! :)

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LibraryThing member surreality

Plot: Nothing twisted, a few logical jumps but overall coherent and fairly straightforward. There aren't any real subplots to speak of, but none of the books in this series had them so far.

Characters: Henry is only in the background again, which is a good thing and gives the rest of the cast more

space. The crew gets involved more, though most of them are just tertiary characters and not much more than names. There is no truly nerve-grating character, which makes the cast rather pleasant overall.

Style: Average, with no annoying blunders but neither anything too original - fitting for the genre. Good momentum and pacing, nice use of absurd and surreal situations. Tanya Huff has also discovered online slash fandom, and occasional digs at fans come up.

Plus: The absurdity adds a constant level of amusement to the story. Likeable lead character, good set of secondary characters.

Minus: The demon plot felt to get a bit out of hand, and there was no true climax at the end.

Summary: Entertaining read when you're not looking for something challenging.

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LibraryThing member Antares1

Tanya Huff has produced another very entertaining book. In Smoke and Ashes Tony Foster, now a Training Assistant Director, stops a possible threat to a stuntwoman on the set of the TV show he works for. She shows up in his apartment after the filming, and he finds out that she's an immortal

Demongate. If she dies a host of demons will flood the world and slaughter the innocent. Pulling in the help of Henry Fitzroy, the vampire from the Blood series, and various members of the cast and crew from the TV show, they set out to protect the Demongate and stop the world from being destroyed.

The book went by very fast, I finished it in a day and a half. I didn't start the series initially, because the central character was gay. I have nothing against the homosexual lifestyle. I have several friends that are gay or bisexual. It's just something I don't really relate to. I wasn't sure that the romantic wishes of a gay character would appeal to me. Ms. Huff pulls off the homosexuality with believability, and pathos. I've read some slash on the internet, and it's more along the lines of insert tab A into slot B. The reader ends up sympathizing with her characters though, and you want to see them get the relationship they want.

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LibraryThing member bluesalamanders

Third and final book in the Smoke Trilogy. This book was actually...hilarious. There were so many pop-culture references - and Tony was dealing two old-beyond-measure people who didn't pay attention to that sort of thing - that it made me laugh out loud about every third page. I also enjoyed the

story, and the characters. Leah was a well-written character and Tony really came into his own.

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LibraryThing member TW_Spencer

Not the best ending to a trilogy, what with all the open plots dangling, but an ok read nonetheless. Of the series this was my least favorite, although i still find Tony and Henry to be intriguing characters.

LibraryThing member Jenson_AKA_DL

Two months after escaping from almost certain death by haunted house Tony Foster's world is still reeling from the changes as he attempts to embrace his wizardly side and undertake ever increased duties resulting from his promotion to TAD on Darkest Night. This is in addition to the fact that his

personal life is still in chaos from his slightly requited yet unfulfilled crush on co-star Lee Nichols and estrangement from his best friend/patron/former lover and vampire, Henry Fitzroy. Luckily for Tony the world around him never stays calm enough for him to dwell on his life’s angst for too long and when the new stunt-woman Leah turns out to be a Demongate and focus of a demon convergence it is time for him to turn hero again to save the world from a blood hungry and antlered arjh lord bent on utter domination.

This third story of Tony Foster's Vancouver based adventures, and regrettably the last of the trilogy, was just an engrossing read as the first two books, although I enjoyed the first two a bit more. I still really like Tony's character and the whole television show production aspect to the setting and plot and wish that the author would do a bit more with the characters. Certainly where this left off has left room for more stories. As always with this author's writing, there are parts which I wish she would have expanded upon, but it really is a slight frustration in the overall. She did a wonderful job with her new addition of Leah and her host of side characters whom we have gotten to know rather well over the three books (for whatever reason I really liked Mouse). I would certainly once again strongly suggest this trilogy to people with open minds who enjoy dark fantasy and a story that doesn't hesitate to poke fun at itself.

Since the unexpected short story of Tony and Henry in "Many Bloody Returns" is what inspired me to pick up "Smoke and Shadows" sooner rather than later, I will be keeping an eye out for hidden shorts that I hope will pop up in the future, although another full length novel would be the ideal.

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LibraryThing member rivkat

Huff is so up and down for me! This was light and basically charming; it’s a spinoff of her main vampire series focused on a wizard who works for a cheesy Vancouver fantasy series about a detective vampire. Our hero is mostly doing fine (though his crush on the series’ sidekick, who is at least

pretending to be straight, is giving him angst), until an immortal stuntwoman seeks out his help preventing a demon invasion that will kill her—and destroy the world, but she doesn’t care so much about that. Bantery and breezy, with what seemed like lots of cheap Vancouver TV in-jokes, or jokes at least.

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LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey

Oh, that was lovely. I thought I'd read all of the Smoke trilogy, but apparently I'd missed this one. Tony grows up a little more - in several senses. Leah is a pain, but she also knows quite a bit about magic, though from the outside - very helpful, in spots. The whole Demongate and Demonic

Convergence is fascinating. I kind of like Kevin, too, though he's a bit of a whiner. He could be very useful - or very dangerous - further down the line. One of the ways Tony grows up is discovering that people want to help, if there's need - and it's not up to him to keep them shielded. Not even Lee. There's a lot of sex in the story - nothing explicit, but between Leah's tendencies and Tony figuring things out it's pretty well pervasive. I liked the thing with the married guy. And there were several places where I laughed aloud, less because the line was funny and more because it was just absolutely perfect. Tanya Huff does that - finds that bolt of lightning phrase. Wonderful book, a definite keeper - I was pretty sure of that before I started, but it's nice to have it confirmed.

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LibraryThing member JeremyPreacher

A solid and entertaining end to the series (although I'd be perfectly happy to read more, and it's certainly open enough for many more adventures to follow.) We're back to the more traditional urban fantasy format, and I was fairly pleased with it. The immortal and kind of obnoxious Leah was fun,

the snippets of the main characters bluffing, sneaking, and lying their way into all sorts of random places was entertaining, and while I was never quite sold on the villain, I did appreciate the finale. ("He's a demon, what did you expect?")

I still don't really care about Tony and Lee as a couple, but they're far less annoying than just about every other urban fantasy romance ever.

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LibraryThing member cindywho

You probably wouldn't be reading this unless you like Tanya Huff and this series. It's fun and light for Buffy-style demon/vampire/wizard urban fantasy. Perfect dorky read for public transit except that the cover made me want to obscure it from public view.

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