HALL OF SMOKE

RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Paperback/ebook/ audiobook

Author HM Long

Publisher Titan Books

Ultimately, this is the story of a journey. There’s a physical one, as warrior-priestess protagonist Hessa goes from the ruins of her priests’ village home to an enemy camp, to countries in the south, and then back and beyond through the mountains to the frozen north. That, however, is the least important journey. The one that really matters is her mental and emotional voyage.

Travel, they say, broadens the mind, and as Hessa encounters followers of other gods she comes to understand the true nature of the deities who rule her world, and in particular the one to whom her life has been devoted.

Hannah Long has managed to balance one woman’s growing awareness that she can demand as well as give loyalty with fast action and swiftlymoving events, and the world which she has created has a real sense of depth. While the narrative sticks strictly to Hessa, you get the sense that other characters have full lives and their own motivations that she’s often unaware of, without this ever being shoehorned in to the point that it disrupts the main story.

Despite the presence of gods, it all feels wonderfully human and believable, and though the story is complete in itself – with no trilogy being conveniently queued up in this case – this is a world from which we’d be genuinely interested in reading more tales.