Hi Cara,
Today’s review on my book is the final book in Sally Green’s The Smoke Thieves trilogy, The Burning Kingdom. The Burning Kingdom is out now.
The heart-pounding conclusion to the daring Smoke Thieves trilogy.
In this conclusion to the epic Smoke Thieves trilogy, the world has erupted into all-out war. King Aloysius is mining powerful demon smoke and using it to fuel an unstoppable army of children. March, now banished for treason, has joined up with this boy army. Forbidden from ever seeing Edyon again, and overwhelmed by his own betrayal, March no longer cares if he lives or dies.
Catherine–now queen of Pitoria–must find a way to defeat the boy army, while also grappling with her own troubles: her secret demon smoke addiction, and unresolved tension with her former lover, Ambrose. Catherine seeks military support from Calidor by reaching out to her illegitimate cousin Edyon, who has been proclaimed heir to the Calidorian throne. But Edyon has almost no power as he’s entangled in the unfamiliar machinations and manipulations of the royal court, finding that being the claimed son of a prince may be no easier than being a bastard.
With Catherine, his love, now married off and moving on, and his brother and sister tortured and executed before him, Ambrose doesn’t know what his role in this world is any more. He leads an expedition into the demon world, hoping to destroy the boy army’s stores of demon smoke. In this underground world, he runs into Tash, whom everyone had believed dead. She has survived in this new world using magical abilities that, prior to now, only demons had.
Aloysius will send his demon smoke-powered boy army to kill them all, if he can. But what nobody knows is that there is more to the smoke than meets the eye…
(synopsis from goodreads.com)
The Burning Kingdom brings The Smoke Thieves to a blazing end.
Like the previous books, The Burning Kingdom is told via multiple points of view. My favourite points of view were Catherine, March and Edyon.
Catherine Point of View as she shows that a Queen can rule and lead in a war.
March point of view as what he is doing and seeing has a greater impact on the story as a whole.
Edyon point of view because his life is very different from the previous books.
Ambrose, Tash and Harold POV are enjoyable and add to the story I just was engaged more with the others.
One of my favourite elements of The Burning Kingdom is showing strength in being different and allowing them to be their true self. It doesn’t matter if your female, gay, disabled or a different race. All that matters that you do the right thing and stay loyal to your friends.
The plot overall has moments that surprised me and other moments that didn’t. But these moments made sense to the plot. I was happy with the ending, but Sally nearly gave me a heart attack. As a lot still needed to be resolved with 15% of the book left.
The Burning Kingdom and The Smoke Thieves trilogy is a great YA fantasy where it takes the strangest group of character to stop evil.
My Rating for The Burning Kingdom is 3.7 out of 5.
Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin for gifting me a copy of The Burning Kingdom for a fair and honest review.
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Thanks for reading,
