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Curses And Smoke (2014)

by Vicky Alvear Shecter(Favorite Author)

3.66 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0545509939 (ISBN13: 9780545509930)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Arthur A. Levine Books

review 1: Tag is a slave and a healer. He will spend the rest of his life healing the injured gladiators owned by his master. Tag longs to enter the gladiators’ arena and fight his way to freedom.Lucia is the master’s daughter. Her father intends to marry her to a wealthy, but much older Roman, to fund the expansion of his gladiatorial business. Lucia is a free spirit and longs to escape her fate, especially now that she has reconnected with Tag, her childhood friend. The two fall in love, and plot how to escape their fates and live out their lives together. Their plan is complicated by a rich patrician who is a student at the gladiator school. When an earthquake destroys Pompeii the young lovers must struggle to find each other again admid the resulting chaos.Schecter ha... mores gathered all the elements of what should be a compelling story, but somehow the tale lacks energy. The characters are two-dimensional The paranormal “curse” is an element that doesn’t quite work. The romance between Tag and Lucia needs to heat up, and the details of gladiator training, while interesting, slow down the action. This is a quick read, but in the end, disappointing.
review 2: Curses and Smoke by Vicky Alvear Shecter is about Lucia, a young girl living in Ancient Pompeii whose father owns a gladiatorial school. Lucia falls in love with the young healer, Tag, but she is engaged to be married to an old dude! Uh oh! Also, ya know. Pompeii.This book was really quite good initially. Tag and Lucia are both good characters. Tag, obviously, wants to be free, because he is a slave. Lucia also wants to be free, because she is a woman and she doesn't have any power to choose her life. Both are pretty classic tropes, so they leave something to be desired, but Shecter writes them in authentic and pretty interesting ways. Basically, it's a pretty ordinary and enjoyable book about Pompeii and young love.I actually thought Quintus was the best character. He's your classic misunderstood villain, and I really wanted more from him. It seems like Shecter just wanted to add dimension to him, so she made it seem like he was trying to be nice and added the fact that he was in love with Tag. But then he just disappears. He never gets to do anything good, the characters don't like him, and he dies without any sort of closure. Not a good story line.The novel also falls short in its conclusion. Pompeii, inevitably, succumbs to Mount Vesuvius, and people die. Our heroes, though, escape! And it seems like they'll finally get to have all that freedom they've been pining for. But then, LUCIA DIES. Seriously? You have the young girl get stabbed by her father? I don't like reading about teenage girls who are trying to make a better life for themselves only to die in the end. What kind of message is that? You can try, but inevitably your father will wreck your dreams? Also, your boyfriend and surrogate son will get to live. Because the good men win and the good women die. Because ALSO HER BEST FRIEND DIED.As a woman, reading a book partly told from a woman's point of view and with a woman on the front, I just did not enjoy that ending. Every SINGLE female character in the book died. Lucia, the woman who took care of her, her mother, and her pregnant friend. I'm surprised to find that from a female writer. Also, Shecter wrote in her historical notes that she made it a point to let Lucia's dog live. Seriously? THE DOG?! less

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