Secrets in the Mist – Book Review

At the get go the premise of this book honestly had a really strong mark against it for me, so much so that if it weren’t at the behest of a good friend of mine I never would have picked it up. The Skyworld series is a fantasy steampunk-esque world where a mysterious green mist has been turning people (basically) into zombies for about 100 years.

While I love crazy world settings with airships and steampunk, I deeply detest zombie stories. I don’t mean this as a slight towards anyone who loves that genre. More power to you! But I grew up in a time when the fantasy worlds were over populated with werewolves, vampires, and zombies. Soooo many zombie movies, shows, and books came out all at once. Also, I hate copious gore. So creepy, gross, decaying creatures are *not* my happy place.

Still, my love for the creativity of steampunk and floating worlds contested strongly with my distaste for the undead. Finally thanks to the delighted ravings of my friend, I gave in and tried it out. And I’m so glad I did!

First off, this is *not* a story that needlessly revels in the putrid. If you’re a fan of heavy gore, this won’t be your cup of tea- or maybe it still will be , who am I to say? It *is* really well written at the end of the day! Now, it doesn’t completely ignore the darker sides of its premise, so there are still decent amounts of descriptive detail, but I found it to be that sweet spot of description that keeps a story flowing the right way.

At the end of the day I was just grateful that the story didn’t get trapped in the shock and awe cop-out of “ew look at the icky monster” but was instead able to build up some good tension and intrigue.

“Ok Tiffany, enough dancing around it! What is the book actually about?!”

You have two central POV characters that you follow: Cass and Theodore. Cass is the orphaned street urchin who is just doing her best to survive the purges of the wealthy. Who whenever they get to feeling a little too crowded will either kill or force the peasant class down into lower elevations where the Mist resides – producing more and more of the “Turned”. She eventually finds a home as a crewmember on an airship which dives into the death cloud to find ancient abandoned treasures to sell back to the upper classes.

Theodore is from the elite of the elites and one of the only people with power actually desiring to bring an end to the Mist and save mankind. He’s a bit naïve as he doesn’t see how the upper crust around him would see the end of the Mist as a threat to their near god-like power over the people.

While there isn’t anything wrong with the character of Theo – well rounded and definitely driven – I have to admit I was disappointed each time the POV shifted away from Cass and back to him. Again, not because of flaws with his character, or even his story arc. I was just *that* drawn into the world of airship treasure hunting with Cass.

I loved getting glimpses of the crew and their varying backgrounds, along with the suspense gliding deep down into a world frozen in time by the mist.

Now while some moments of story foreshadowing was a bit easy to see through I never felt annoyed by it. These are intelligent characters (both good and bad), which means more time enjoying the progression and less time shouting into the void, “Just do the thing!”

I’ve been plagued recently with quite a few dumb main character books, so this was a beautiful breath of fresh air.

I will admit that it took me a minute to really get into the story, buuut I feel that is more of a case of my own life’s chaos rather than actual poor writing. Because otherwise, this is a *very* well paced book. It’s the first in its series so it has to do a lot of the heavy lifting of world building. Yet, it never gets bogged down by this, a good balance of details coupled with letting the reader have room to envision things as they desire.

I don’t know about your reading tastes, but I prefer to not be told every crumb of detail about something because A.) It halts the plot and B.) Sometimes I just want to fill in the gaps for myself.

At the end of the day, the most important facet of a story for me are the characters. Do the *feel* real? Can I connect with them on some level? Is there consistency within their personalities with the natural progression of growth their circumstances would bring?

And I can happily say that Secrets in the Mist ticked all of those boxes for me. So much so that I immediately purchased the next installment Blood Secrets.

So be staying tuned to find out if the next book can hold up to this hype!