Review: The Smoke-Scented Girl

The Smoke-Scented Girl by Melissa McShane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've become a Melissa McShane fan over the past little while. Her books consistently make it into my Best of the Year roundups, because they're well crafted, extremely well edited, and usually feature determined, principled, capable young women as protagonists (my favourite kind of protagonist).

This one is a little different in a few ways. The less important way is that the determined, principled, capable young woman is not the viewpoint character or the protagonist; that's a determined, principled, capable young man who eventually figures out he's in love with her. One of the more important ways in which it's different from other McShane books is that it achieves and sustains a higher level of tension. The slower beginning/action-packed ending pattern is still there, but I didn't notice it as strongly, because from early on we have a motivated protagonist in a dynamic situation, plenty at stake, and lots happening.

The other important difference in this book is that the world feels richer and deeper than in other McShane books I've read. Not that it's bad in those other books, just that this one has some extra touches that make me believe in it. The names, for instance; I pay a lot of attention to character names, and these feel like the author has paid attention to them as well. They don't fall into the trap of familiar biblical names in a world where Christianity doesn't exist; they're made up, but they're made up in a way that makes them both easy to remember and credible. There are repeating patterns to the surnames, for example, suffixes which several surnames have in common - the kind of thing that happens in real life.

The world feels three-dimensional and lived-in, not thrown together out of scenery flats like so many fantasy worlds, but this is achieved by a few subtle touches rather than a series of infodumps. It's broadly similar to, but not simply a version of, Napoleonic-era Britain (a period the author has researched as background for another series), and there's a good balance between elements of similarity and elements of difference. The whole thing feels both authentic and thought through, and given how often I ding books set in the 19th century or its equivalent for missing both of those marks, I appreciate that very much.

The characters are delightful: the brilliant young mage who doubts himself and has trouble getting people to take him seriously because he's so young; the cursed young woman dealing with her fate as best she can, and making a decent job of it; the seemingly foppish friend who is clearly much more competent than he lets on, loyal to the death, and closer than a brother; the petty bureaucrat pigheadedly determined to do the wrong thing; the jealous former teacher who contradicts the wunderkind at every turn; the no-nonsense, experienced older woman who trusts the young people to get it right; even the incidental, nameless characters met along the way have a sense of solidity to them.

These are new heights for an always-entertaining author, and I look forward to reading many more of her books.

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