Book Review: Silver & Smoke

Title: Silver & Smoke
Author: Helen Scheuerer
Genre: Romantasy, Romance, Fiction, Fantasy

What It’s About: Wren is still stuck in the horror at what Lord Lucian Devereux had told her in that room—Torj is poisoned—as she watches him go down on his knees and ask her what his Queen wants. She had told him that she needed to make it seem like she genuinely broke his heart at a public ceremony, because Lucian had told her that if she’s seen with Torj, making a cuckold of Darian, he would withhold the information on how to cure Torj. She tells him that she wants him by her side as they end everything. Torj is gutted about everything and he cannot stand that she is ending up with Darian, someone whom he finds despicable for everything that he has done to Torj. He told her that there must be another way, but Wren told him that there isn’t because they need time that they don’t have. Wren makes her way to the gates of Drevenor, where Kipp tells her to hurry up as she is supposed to be entering with Darian. At the gates, Darian tells off Torj as a brute, and together Wren and Darian enter the grand hall, where everything has been transformed into a lavish party. She realizes that it goes to show just how powerful Lucian is that he could put such a party together in a short time. Many people wish the couple a good time, speaking about them as looking good together, which annoys Torj. Once the ceremony is over, with Wren pretending to be enamored with Darian even though she doesn’t like him, the Devereux men, Wren and Thea leave for Lady and Lord Briar’s estate to ask them to aid her cause. During the ride, Wren has a traveling kit to continue working on her alchemy, though Lucian looks down on her for it. At the Briar estate, which takes her a moment to recognize that the brother of Lord Briar was one of her victims, she flatters the hosts, and later speaks with Lady Briary, who offers her manor as the place for a wedding. She later meets the groundskeeper, specifically the rose expert, who tells her a bit about cutting plants, and preserving them, which surprises her. Once they’re done there, the whole group move on to Lord and Lady Pendleton’s estate to secure their assistance.

In the meantime, Torj had watched the whole ceremony, feeling sick and wishing to do anything but let Wren end up with Darian. Dessa comes by and asks him for vials of blood, telling him that she will be working on the cure for him. He gives it to her freely, not even noticing that he blood was taken out. Then, Wilder comes by and takes Torj into Highguard on a mission from Audra—they need to get more information about Silas the Kingsbane and how to defeat him. They sense that things are wrong, and come across a fight between two men. They break it up, and when they ask the villagers what is going on, they tell the two Warswords that these two men have started going at each other’s throats recently. This makes them realize that things are already changing for the worse. The two men make their way to another village as ordered by Audra, and Torj knows that they’re doing this to keep him away from Wren. They camp one night, and while they are at a campfire, Cal shows up with Zavier in tow. They are a bit taken aback because Zavier has been placed into custody as he is the brother of Andor Terling, who is Silas, and the other royals have been adamant that he be investigated to make sure that he’s not sharing anything with his own brother. Cal tells them that it was Audra who suggested that he take Zavier out of Drevenor, because there was likely to be an attempt on Zavier’s life.

While they are at the campfire, they sense that there is someone in the woods, and the individual calls out to them—it turns out to be a woman, who has come to show them some goods that she found. When Torj unrolls the item in the canvas bag, he realizes that it is Vernich the Bloodletter’s mace. Vernich had gone missing, and one of the younger Warswords, named Ashlyn Graves, went to find him. The woman explains to them that she also found fingers with rings on them at the same site, and they quickly recognize that these rings belong to Ashlyn Graves. When questioned about the location that she found these in, the woman tells the Warswords that she and her group found these at a site of a fight a couple of days away from their current location, and that there was a lot of blood, implying that no one could have survived.

Wilder, Torj, Cal and Zavier move on to the town that Audra requested that they check in on, and find a man chained up to a post. Very quickly, Torj recognizes the signs, and Cal points out that the man reminds them of a Howler—one of the corrupted creatures from the Shadow War. Zavier confirms that there is some dark alchemy at play. Torj’s feelings of protecting Wren flare up and he demands that Wilder tell him the information on Wren’s whereabouts. In fact, he threatens Wilder because he knows that Wilder has been tasked with keeping him away from Wren. Wilder agrees to tell him the location, but adds that they all will go together to meet up with Wren.

At Pendleton’s estate, Wren is shoved into white gown after white gown by servants, without a care for her feelings, while the other ladies of the court talk around her and drink alcohol. They often comment on a dress that she’s wearing, and when she is dressed in yet another white dress, Wren has enough. She kicks the group out, with Thea backing her up to the Ladies of the Court by telling them that the Princess of Delmira needs a few moments as she’s getting emotional. In the silence of the room, Wren breaks down and cries, but when she looks up into the mirror, she sees Torj behind her. His breath is absolutely taken away by Wren as she is a vision in white, and he wishes so much that they could have this together. Wren tells him that he shouldn’t be here, but he manages to convince her to steal a moment in an alcove. They have sex, and in the middle of it, they are caught by none other than Darian Devereux. Torj almost takes Darian out, as he wants Wren, but Wren tells him to just hear Darian out. Darian knows that Torj doesn’t believe him, so he hides them in the alcove by pulling the curtains together, and then waits by the fire place. Sure enough, Lucian shows up and they talk about Wren as well as their plans. Though Torj doesn’t like the way that they are talking about Wren as if she was chattel, he realizes that Darian didn’t have to let them hear all of that. When the father dismisses Darian, he comes back to the alcove, and tells Torj that he had hidden away Torj’s grandmother, Vara, alongside with his own mother in order to protect them both from his father. Darian has told Vara to keep them moving around the area, and then he had Torj come to Tver to deal with the bears in order to keep him away from additional danger involving Lucian’s own plotting. Darian gives Torj a piece of paper containing Vara’s last known location, and Torj accepts this as the beginning of them trying to let go of the animosity between them. Wren then explains to Torj that the engagement is more of an agreement between Darian and her—she needs time to save Torj, and Darian needs their engagement to appear real in order to get control of his inheritance, because his father doesn’t trust him and has made it contingent on a variety of things. In the end, Wren says that she will have to poison Lucian, once Darian gets things squared away for that inheritance.

While they are in Pendleton, the Warswords make the announcement that Howlers are being created, and that Vernich and Graves are dead. Then news comes that Drevenor is attacked by Silas’s forces, so Wren, Thea, Wilder, Cal, Kipp, Zavier, and Torj head over to the school. Darian also comes with a contingent of his solders to fight off the People’s Vanguard. Wren is extremely worried about Dessa, who was the only one of their trio that was left in the school. When the group arrives, the fighting is already happening, and they find that the Master Alchemists are also fighting with their own alchemy against the People’s Vanguard in the Grand Hall. Wren and her group of friends go searching for Dessa, finding her welded shut in Wren’s old room. Torj breaks down the door, and Dessa tries to explain what she has done with Wren’s own alchemy and research. Suddenly, the group finds that they have been encircled by their enemies, and there is no way out. The Warswords say that they could fight it out, but it seems like the enemy is never ending, so instead, they have Cal create a zip-line through the window of Wren’s room. Torj also points out that Silas will have access to everything from Drevenor, from the archives to the experiments, and that will help him win. Wren realizes this and comes to the conclusion that the only way out is for the school to be destroyed. Torj apologizes to her, but she tells him that it will be fine. When they are safely on the ground, Silas shows up and Wren realizes that she cannot fight him with her magic as Silas is swallowing the magic somehow. Torj rallies the Warswords and they fight against the onslaught of the People’s Vanguard, to give both Wren and Thea a chance to get to the school and destroy it. Torj tries to take on Silas, only to keep him occupied and not much else, while the Embervale sister take down the school in its entirety.

The group then escapes, meeting with Darian at a nearby inn, where they are told that the Lord have come to watch. Wren enters and is very much disgusted by how merrily the Lords are sitting around and talking. Darian takes her to her room, which he had acquired for her, and Torj sneaks up into her room to be with her. She is worried about Lucian seeing them, but Torj tells her that it is all taken care of. Then they have sex together, before he leaves her room. The next day, Wren speaks with Dessa and finds out that she has been tasked with occupying Lucian. Wren apologizes to Dessa, who responds that she decided to take a page out of Wren’s book by adding something to the wine that made everyone very sleepy. Dessa also reveals that Wren has nothing to be sorry about in terms of Drevenor going up, because she had sent her own designs of the memory weave to an inventor in her town to keep them safe for her, and potentially work on the design.

Everyone gets on a ship to head to Harenth and then to Thezmarr as Wren had decided, and while Wren is busy, Torj heads below deck. He makes his way to the stables, where he sees Darian and promptly blacks out. When Torj comes to, Darian is sitting nearby him, and the two of them talk about things, mending their own relationship so that by the time they go back onto the deck, things are lighter. As they exit, Darian gives Torj a ring that once belonged to Vara and her own daughter, while telling him that there’s more than one way to get married. Torj decides that he’s done waiting for someday, and wants to make use of now, so he reaches out to Wren through their soul bond and finds her hidden away in a little compartment by the anchor, where she has been working on alchemy projects to save him. Wren demands to know about his symptoms because she needs to know them so that she can figure out the right formula. Torj is honest with her about them, including the time that he fell while sparring with Cal, and also his most recent fainting. He tells her that he needs to speak with the captain, and then gets down on his knees.

Wren and Torj have sex in the hidden space, and then Torj leaves the area to go speak to the Captain, while Wren finally knows what she is going to write to the people. Kipp had suggested that she use words, the same way that Silas did, to get people to help her cause, and she had struggled with it. She works on that for a while, before heading back to spend some time with Darian and Lucian, and then goes back to her room, where she continues writing the rest of the information she wants to share with the people.

When the ship docks in port, it’s too silent. Even Kipp comments that something is off, but they head to the nearby city anyway. There, they find a city center full of dead people, and Wren realizes that they have been poisoned in a way that makes it look like the Poisoner would be the one to blame. They discuss it between themselves about whether to report it and the chances of the truth about her Poisoner past coming out, but Wren tells them that the best thing they can do is report it, and if it comes out, so be it. Once that has been taken care of, the group and the army continue on to Thezmarr, which has now changed under Audra. In the days that they are there, Wren goes foraging in the woods outside of the Fortress, and Torj bring Zavier and Dessa to help her. Thea also reveals that Wilder has proposed, and so they prepare for the festivities. Torj goes out drinking with Wilder and Talemir, who shows up from Naarva, while watching a new class of Guardians train below them. Thea and Wilder get married in the spot they first met, and the whole fortress celebrates because they’re the first Warswords to get married. During the celebration, Wren comes up to Torj to talk to him, but he tells her that Lucian is watching. She retorts that Lucian can’t hold anything against her for coming up and talking to a friend at a party, and then tells him to meet her later that night at the river.

They meet at the river overlooking a space, where Lucian’s banner men had set up camp. They aren’t seen, so Wren goes into the water naked, and they end up having sex there. The next day, everyone organizes themselves to leave for Delmira. Audra leaves Torj in charge of commanding the armies, and tells him that she will meet them in Delmira as she has to take care of some things first. Thea and Wilder come to Torj and tell him that they have a faster way of getting to Delmira, but it’s through a mountain. Torj decides that they will take it, and at some point, while they are in the mountain, they have to go single file. During this time, Wren’s magic is acting haywire, so Torj speaks through the bond and distracts her with an image of them having sex where he takes her from behind. Wren hears him chuckling, but realizes that it has done the trick of calming her, which in turn has calmed her magic.

When they come out the other side, they move to Wren’s Cottage in Delmira, where they make camp. Torj doesn’t fall off his horse, but he stumbles enough that Cal grips him and helps him to his tent, where Torj promptly passes out. Wren wants to see Torj because she noticed that he hadn’t been well, but Thea tells her that Lucian is watching right now. She promises her sister that the Warswords will help her get to Torj but she has to wait until nightfall. She does make her way to Torj, spending some time with him in the tent, and gives him a strengthening potion, before leaving in the early morning back to her own tent. She gets called to meet with the Lords and they’re all shooting daggers at her, because they received information that she is the Poisoner. Darian helps her bluff the Lords, reminding them how they had been impersonated as well, and they let it go. In the meantime, Dessa checks in on Torj, and when he tells her that he just needs more time, she tells him to leave it to her.

So Torj busies himself with cleaning his armor and weapon, when a trio of young guardians come up to him asking him to show them to do what he is doing. Soon enough, he is teaching a class on how to take care of their armor and keep it in good condition. He sees Dessa wave over to him, and when he dismisses the class, she comes to him alongside with Zavier. They tell him that they have made a strengthening potion that would be considered illegal in Drevenor, and tested it on themselves, before adding that Torj shouldn’t tell Wren. He takes one vial of it, and immediately feels better. Torj decides to carry out a mission tasked to him by Kipp, going to a couple of locations circled by Wren on a map. As the camp prepares to move out, Lucian demands to know the whereabouts of the Bear Slayer, as Torj was meant to lead the armies. She reminds him that he had forbidden her from contact with him, and so she doesn’t know. They leave the camp, and Torj later catches up with them, his stallion pulling a cart full of the silvertide plants that Wren needed. He also reveals that Silas had burnt some of the areas of these silvertide roses, so the ones that he found were the ones that were untouched. Wren doesn’t know if the plants will be good, but it prompts her to remember of a different location.

She mentions the ravine that she had visited at some point, so everyone heads there, and they find that it is full of the silvertide rose that she needs it. As they harvest the plant, Wren can feel someone watching them, and scouts return with information that there is a contingent of the People’s Vanguard heading their way. Torj makes plans, splitting up the silvertide rose across two groups—Lucian’s army, and their group of friends. He tells Lucian to take the road to their original location near Dorinth. Lucian puts up a protest about his daughter-in-law being used for a trap, but Torj shuts that down, telling him that he needs the storm wielders with him for what they are going to do. He takes the Warswords, Dessa, Zavier, Wren and a handful of men into the ravine, where they find themselves trapped. The People’s Vanguard that was behind them had made it in front of them, and the Ravine is so tight that there is no way to turn around. Complete mayhem ensues, and soldiers start dying. Out of nowhere, a club comes swinging, and Torj sees Vernich in the bloody mist. He helps them, but demands to know where is his mace. Kipp pulls it out of his saddle, along with Graves’s fingers, surprising their friends because they had put the mace and the fingers on a raft and set it on fire while they were on the ship as a memorial to their fallen Warswords. Kipp tells him that he suspected that Vernich would not go down that easy.

Vernich takes the remaining group to the Warren. It appears to be a mount in the countryside, but it actually contains hidden living quarters for people who had gone into hiding after the fall of Delmira, including some Guardians of Thezmarr. Once they’re inside, Vernich explains what had happened to him initially, how Graves had caught up to him and revealed that she is his daughter, and how they had fought. He also explains to the group that the Warren has some fighters who have been doing some guerrilla warfare on Silas’s forces. Then he shows Wren to an area that has been set up for her so that she can do her alchemy work. Wren and Dessa settle in the space, and begin working on more of the potion to remove the magic-muting ability. Zavier shows up with people living in the Warren who have certain skillsets that he feels could be helpful to them, like cooking and chopping, and they set up an assembly line of people to help make the potions faster.

Torj watches Wren work and help out the myriad of people who come to her for assistance and healing. He then goes to clean his Warhammer, but he is not able to do it because his hands are shaking again. He withholds from drinking more of the vials as he wants to use them when he absolutely needs them, and Dessa had told him that they only had a small supply of it. Vernich, Cal, and Wilder show up, and Vernich comes up to Torj, taking the hammer out of his hand. He sits down next to Torj and starts cleaning it for him, really finding the cleaning aid that Wren made for Torj amazing. Vernich asks if they know why he switched from the sword to the mace, and explains to the group that he had been injured in a sparring session that went wrong while training to become a Guardian of Thezmarr. The healers had told him at the time that he wouldn’t be able to wield a sword properly, so he thought his fighting days were over, until the Weapons Master gave him the mace and told him that there is a way. Vernich suggests to Torj that he should change to something lighter, though Torj rejects that notion. Ultimately, Vernich reminds him that their job as Warswords is to protect the realms, but how they do that is not dependent on only one type of weapon that they wield.

A day or so later, the group leaves with Vernich and another 150 people who can fight from the Warren. They make it to the meetup point with the Lords and the remaining army, where Lord Devereux chastises them. Vernich tells him to piss off as he doesn’t take orders from the likes of them, which shuts the man up. Unfortunately the armies from Harenth, Aveum and Tver hadn’t made it to Delmira, so they have to come up with a plan to fight off Silas’s men without them. Wren had put a plan into motion a few days earlier with Kipp’s help, but now they incorporate a plan around that one. Torj doesn’t want to let her go, but she tells him that she can handle it and he trusts her.

Wren, Kipp, and Cal set up the camp just in front of the city of Dorinth, running around and making it look like there was an army. Then, Wren uses her lighting to both draw the attention of Silas’s people, but also be a sign for Torj to launch his attack. The initial plan was that the three would flee, leaving Cal behind to be captured, but Cal gets injured with an arrow through his shoulder. As a result, Wren changes the plan in the last minute, and stays behind, where she promptly gets knocked out by the men in the People’s Vanguard. When she comes to, she finds herself in a cage, where she is jeered at by the men. They make her drink one of the wine goblets to make sure that it’s not poisoned, and when she doesn’t drop dead, they start drinking it and eating the food. Soon enough, they are all dead, and Wren gets herself out of the manacles they put on her as well as the cage, with her hairpin. Kipp and Cal come back for her and Cal comments that she needs to remind him to never get on her bad side. When they get upset about her changing the plan, she tells Cal that they had her drink the poisoned wine, so if he had stayed he would not be alive now, as she has built up an immunity to all of those poisons. She takes care of his wound, and tells him that he needs to get checked by a healer. Then the trio heads into Dorinth.

In the meantime, Torj separated the forces into three different hosts, which were to attack the city from different sides. When he sees Wren’s magic in the sky, he has them attack, and his force goes along the side into the city, trying to protect the Silvertide Roses that they had found on the side of the castle. They make it into the castle ruins, where Torj throws himself into attack after attack on the remaining forces. Then Thea screams, and Torj rushes to Wilder, who seems to be struggling. Torj asks him where he is in pain, but Wilder tells him that he cannot feel his Furies-given strength. When Wren returns, Thea is in tears and begging her to do something about Wilder. She gives Wilder the potion, and soon enough his powers return. As they take a moment to observe the city, the silvertide roses go up in flames, and Wren’s hope for saving Torj goes up in flames. As the princess of Delmira, she decides on how to treat the prisoner of war, and she makes sure that they are taken care of well, including getting help from her to heal them, which leaves these prisoners bewildered.

When she returns to the vicinity of her tent, Darian starts apologizing to her and telling her that he really tried. She enters the tent, and finds a white wedding dress hanging for her in her tent. Lucian comes out of nowhere, demanding that she marries his son that night, before she takes the crown the next day. He then starts ripping off her clothes, calling her filty and telling her she needs to take a bath. Wren is powerless to stop it, but suddenly Torj is there, pulling Lucian off of her. He roars at the man telling Lucian to get off of his wife, and then proceeds to throw him through the canvas of the tent. Lucian becomes unconscious at this, and Darian starts a fight with Torj. He is only able to get one punch in on Torj, at which point Torj tells Darian that the first one is free, and he cannot be responsible for what happens next. The two squabble but Wren stops them, and Darian goes to his father. Lucian withdraws his support from Wren, calling her a whore and lighting up the instructions on how to save Torj on fire. Wren tells him that he was never planning on giving it to her anyway, to which Lucian tells her that she won’t eve know. Then, Wren tells everyone the truth about her marriage to Torj. This results in the Devereux men leaving with their bannermen.

Unfortunately, this leaves them with a much smaller army, though the army from Aveum and Harenth make it, but Tverr does not appear to be coming. Torj, Wren, Thea, Wilder, Kipp, Cal, Zavier and Dessa have a war council meeting, and Torj pushes the idea of Wren getting crowned now before the upcoming battle against Silas. When Wren speaks to him later, he reveals that the poison is coursing through him much faster, and he just wants to make sure that she is safe after he’s gone. Audra shows up, crowns Wren as the rightful Queen of Delmira, and then tells them to not count on Tver. The group has a solid battle plan, and Dessa shows up to speak with Torj in his tent, giving him pills and a couple of more vials—the ones he needs to use to make it count. He leads the soldiers in battle, but then has to fall back to the second location when Silas’s men come through. At some point, Silas shows up through the underground tunnels, and Torj takes on the last two vials of the strengthening tonic before making his way towards Silas to fight him. Wren, seeing this and realizing that Silas is using his own summoning magic to steal magic from others, jumps from the watch tower into the fray just as Torj gets shot with arrows into his chest. Wren feels him pouring his Warsword strength into her via their bond, and feels as the bond goes taught. Wren fights with Silas using magic and alchemy, but then goes back to Torj to make sure he stays alive. To their surprise, their bond turns from gold into silver becoming visible to others. The silver then cleanses him from all of the poison and Wren realizes that it is magic steeped in love and protection of those she loves. The silver spreads across the grounds healing others, and removing the shadow magic that many of Silas’s people have been under. Wren fights Silas, revealing that he is Andor Terling, a royal himself, to all of the People’s Vanguard, who have stopped fighting. Silas says something about how Delmira betrayed Naarva because Wren’s mother wouldn’t help their mother, but Wren tells him that they both suffered. In the end, Torj gives her his hammer, and she kills Silas with the hammer, ending the battle.

Over the next few weeks, they start to rebuild the country and the city, but also get a visit from Lucian Devereux, asking for a pardon in exchange for his funds to rebuild Delmira. Wren uses her ladies luncheon teapot to quietly poison him, so that a few days later Lucian dies in his sleep of seemingly natural causes, at which point the inheritance goes to Darian. Darian in turn offers to help however he can in re-establishing Delmira, and Wren accepts, though she also wants to open Drevenor Academy in Delmira—on the grounds of her cottage. Darian agrees to help, and Kipp asks for some land so he can build a tavern of his own, while to everyone’s surprise, Cal takes up Zavier’s offer to be a liaison between Naarva and Thezmarr. Zavier and Wren make a treaty between Naarva and Delmira, based on trust and cooperation. And then, Wren and Torj move to the cottage while Dorinth is rebuilt. There, he proposes to her, and six weeks later they get remarried in front of all of their friends. At the wedding, Grandmother Vara shows up and Torj introduces Wren to her, to which Vara says that his mother would be proud of him for marrying a healer.

My Thoughts: My heart was breaking with Torj dying, but I loved the suspense of how they will find their way back to each other at the beginning of the books. I also loved that it seems like Wren had been working with Darian for some time to make things happen and that is why she seemed okay with the engagement. It also gave Torj and Darian a chance to make up and become friends again, realizing that Darian has done everything he could to protect Torj from afar out of love. It’s a wonderful series, and I really enjoyed reading this book—I could not put the book or the whole series down at all.