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Smoke And Iron by Rachel Caine (Ft. Blog Tour, Incredible Giveaways, And Me Shrieking My Little Heart Out)

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The Great Library series is absolutely one of my most favourites, and guess who gets to be on the blog tour for the Smoke & Iron?!?

Meeee!! Your absolutely wildly enthusiastically delighted FAVOURITE FURY! (I am assuming you don’t have other Furies or, if you do, I am still the best of them.) I’m so ecstatic right now, ok. I absolutely loved this latest addition to the series and am screaming softly because this one wrecKED me just a little. As all good books should.

So coming up we have:

☆ an excerpt from Smoke & Iron by Morgan’s POV!
☆ some incredible giveaways, including a signed hardcover copy of Smoke & Iron
☆ me, gushing, in a review
☆ and, of course, NO SPOILERS!! so you’re safe to read on if you haven’t been keeping up with the series!

Smoke And Iron (The Great Library #4) by Rachel Caine is published July 2018!

To save the Great Library, the unforgettable characters from Ink and Bone, Paper and Fire, and Ash and Quill put themselves in danger in the next thrilling adventure in the New York Timesbestselling series.
The opening moves of a deadly game have begun. Jess Brightwell has put himself in direct peril, with only his wits and skill to aid him in a game of cat and mouse with the Archivist Magister of the Great Library. With the world catching fire, and words printed on paper the spark that lights rebellion, it falls to smugglers, thieves, and scholars to save a library thousands of years in the making…if they can stay alive long enough to outwit their enemies.

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Rachel Caine is the New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of more than fifty novels in a diverse range of genres and categories. She’s been honored with multiple awards from RT Booklovers Association and the Texas Library Association, and was honored with two spots on the 2012 “Most Favorite Books of UK Schoolchildren” list. In 2006, she created the Morganville Vampires series in young adult, and premiered the TLA-listed novel Prince of Shadows in 2015, and the new Great Library series with Ink and Bone in 2016. Rachel and her husband R. Cat Conrad live and work in Fort Worth, Texas.

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May contain spoilers for past books so I’ve made it so you have to “show more” if you want to read the full chapter! ENJOY!

Morgan’s first mistake was almost her last.

Being parted from Jess and Wolfe was something she’d expected, but she still hated it; worry about what would happen to them distracted her too much, and when the Obscurist’s carriage had come to collect her from the Great Archives, she’d had to resist the urge to fight. She could have easily gotten free, but that wouldn’t have advanced their cause. She had to be inside the Iron Tower to do that.

The last place she ever wanted to be.

The carriage had been reinforced with scripts to keep her powers blunted, and the first thing the Obscurist who’d come for her had done was lock a golden collar around her neck. She’d felt the alchem­ical formulae written inside it connect with the power in her, and the collar had sealed itself shut.

But that still wasn’t a mistake. It was an advantage. They believed they had her under control. And in the days since, she’d bided her time and pretended to be cowed. She’d sent a message to Jess, but the Obscurists were slow to trust her again; they kept her locked in a room, and when she broke the wards on the door, her collar shocked her into unconsciousness for several hours. When she woke, the wards were up, stronger than ever.

They’d also taken away her Codex. There wasn’t a writing uten­sil or scrap of paper left in the room, and apart from a food tray slipped through a slot in the door, she’d been left completely alone for four days.

On the fifth day, they let her out, but only to meet with the Ob­scurist Magnus.

He had her summoned to the lush gardens near the top of the Tower—an entire floor devoted to beauty and growth, and windows that were open to the outside to permit the warm sea breezes. No point in trying to throw herself out of them; they would snap shut well before she reached them. She’d experimented with that more than a few times during her last internment here.

She took a seat near a pool filled with blooming lotus flowers, and a servant—another Obscurist, but a very lightly talented one—brought a cup of hot tea and sweet pastries. Tea seemed like a miracle to her; they’d denied any to her from the moment she’d been locked away. Morgan poured a cup and took her first sips just as Gregory came into the garden, and the sight of him drove it all home to her in a way the collar and the familiar sight of the garden had not: she was a prisoner here, again.

And he looked so damned smug about it.

Gregory had always struck her as a would-be tyrant, and now he wore the robes of the Obscurist Magnus, the second-most powerful (or, perhaps really third) person in the Great Library. Everything about the way he approached her, from the superior smile to the arrogant thrust of his walk and the toadies scurrying in his wake … it all showed how much he enjoyed his newfound power. Wolfe’s mother had died in this garden. There had been a lot of damage, as Morgan recalled; she could see the repairs now that she looked for them, and the new plants.

Gregory had commissioned himself a new set of robes. These were far more elaborate than what Wolfe’s mother had been content to wear, fine as those were. He was a petty, selfish man. The Archi­vist had set about raising men and women to the top of the Library who believed more in power than in learning, more in arrogance than in humility. Gregory was only the latest of a rotten breed.

The smell of blooming flowers seemed overpowering, and her stomach lurched as she realized that if she couldn’t leave this place under her own terms, she’d never leave it at all. Worse: she’d be tasked with the job of accepting Gregory’s match for her. Bedding a man she couldn’t love. Birthing a child that, if sufficiently gifted, would be kept just as much a prisoner— r seeing it taken from her and sent away to the orphanage if not gifted enough.

To a stranger’s eyes, the Iron Tower might seem luxurious. Ele­gant rooms, fine foods . . . the Obscurists went begging for nothing, except their freedom.

But it all left a rotten, wretched taste in the back of her throat, and for a perilous moment she was afraid she might spit out her tea. She drank down the rest in a gulp and set the cup aside, came to her feet, and met Gregory as an equal.

“I knew we’d get you back, Morgan,” Gregory said. “All that drama and death, and for what? You end up where you belonged from the beginning. And don’t worry. I’ve learned a thing or two about controlling unruly residents. Keria wasn’t willing to face the fact that you represent both a huge gain for us and a huge risk. I am.”

“So you’re going to lock me away,” Morgan said, and shrugged. The collar felt heavy and thick around her neck. Gregory seemed to waver in the heat—when had it gotten so warm in the garden?—but she was sure his smile grew wider. “Or try, more likely. I’ve escaped from this tower more than once. I’ll do it again.” Her voice sounded strange. Hollow, as if she heard it through a long metal tube. Voice communication, she thought. Thomas would be fascinated; she won­dered if she should mention it to him. She vaguely turned, as if she expected to find him standing nearby, and then realized that, no, Thomas was not here, Jess was gone, their little company of friends and allies was shattered into bits, and suddenly the grief and loneli­ness overwhelmed her. She wanted to weep. Jess, she thought, and felt empty to her core. Jess. She needed him here. She needed him to tell her that it would all, finally, be all right.

Nothing seemed right. Not the light, which broke into rainbows around her. Not the heat, which seemed as thick as a blanket on her sweating skin. Not the sound of Gregory’s quiet laughter, as much nightmare as reality.

When he touched her, it might have been gentle, but his finger­tips seemed made of hot coals and rough as granite, and she flinched back. What is it? What’s wrong with me? She struggled to piece thoughts together; they wanted to fly apart, spin into broken colors and sick­ening shards. The tea. He put something in the tea. Something to make her vulnerable, make it harder for her to access her power. She felt the suffocating, deadening effects of the Iron Tower, and the collar weighing her down, and for just a moment she felt a gray wave of de­spair. I can’t. I can’t do this. I’m going to die in here.

She reached out. Not for Gregory. Nothing so obvious. She didn’t need to destroy him, even if she could manage it. She just needed to be sure she could defeat what he’d dosed her with.

It hurt like ripping away a piece of herself, and she gritted her teeth on a scream as the pain built, and built, echoing from the walls of the Tower and the collar, and then a fresh red rose blooming just behind Gregory caught her attention.

She pulled and felt a hiss of energy flowing from the rose. The bloom faded, shriveled, and the life pulled out of the stem, the leaves. Tempting, to pull more, faster, destroying the entire bush, but she stopped with just the one stem.

The petals drifted down, wrinkled and dead. Blackened.

The power she’d taken in broke through the drugs. She was still trapped. Still at Gregory’s whims and mercies.

But she was not helpless.

Because he seemed to expect it, Morgan allowed her eyes to roll back and let her body go limp. Gregory caught her on the way to the ground, and she felt herself being lifted, carried, and the hissing, buzzing complex web of life inside the garden faded away into iron and stone and the bright, burning shadows of other Obscurists and servants.

Let go, she told herself. Let him think he’s won. Unless he believes it, he’ll just put you right back in that locked room. Let him win.

 She rolled into the dark and found it a welcome shelter.

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Find my reviews for Ink And Bone, Paper And Fire, and Ash And Quill!

Now this is going to come as a shock to you but…I FREAKING LOVED THIS BOOK.

The Great Library series is just one of my favourites (the covers are also so beautiful my eyeballs ran off and married them) and I should talk about it more because it’s inventive, unique, heartwrenching, full of family and friendship, the plots can get super schemey (which is the BEST kind of plot) and at the end of it all = it is about book appreciation.

BOOK APPRECIATION. There is nothing that’s going to make me fall in love faster than an entire series devoted to people who would die for books. I mean, same.

Since we’re at the 4th book in the series, the stakes are HIGH.

The last book ended in a wicked cliffhanger (!!) and this one just throws us back into the thick of it. Our book-loving-protection-squad are all split up and traumatised. And being, ya know, tortured. But rebellion is HERE. I lovelovelove how everyone’s lives were on the line and I didn’t feel like everyone was safe — which is super good. Although there was WAY more threats of terror than actually having it follow through. What can I say. I am a little dark. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I think we could’ve had a little more terror on-page to make things seem more real. But I still FREAKING LOVED IT.

Jess, Khalila, Wolfe and Morgan all narrate this time! I did miss not seeing as much of Jess, but everyone was so split up so this worked super well. Also Khalila’s narration was the utter best. I looove her so much.

  • There is basic 100ft line of people wanting to smack Brendan and Jess into the middle of next week due to their schemes.
  • Dario offers to do dirty work until he realises he can’t wear his tailored beautiful clothes. Then he retracts.
  • KHALILA RULES AND SHOOTS BADIES AND PRAYS FOR YOUR SOUL AND IS SWEET AND KIND AND WILL ALSO END YOU. I FREAKING LOVE HER.
  • Brendan. BRENDAN. Since he and Jess are swapping places he ends up writing Jess this letter that is basically: “I have to read books to pretend to be you. I hate reading. Pls let this be over before I end you and then myself and then the entire world.”
  • #DramaQueenBrightwells
  • I love Jess and Brendan and how they backstab each other occasionally but won’t let anyone else do it. Also whenever someone says, “Ah family bonds!” They both laugh and laugh and laugh. Their dad would sell them for a peanut.
  • (Lowkey sad we didn’t get more of Brendan in this book, though. THE SLYTHERIN TO JESS’ RAVENCLAW. I love him so so much!! My Slytherin son.)
  • Glain just hits people and like, I feel this.
  • THERE IS A DRAGON.
  • We go way more into depth about the Obscurists and Morgan’s corrupt power which was so interesting!
  • As always the diversity is on point, with the leading characters being of all races, Khalila being a practising Muslim, one of the main couples being queer, and everything so respectful and amazing!
  • Wolfe and Santi still steal the show every time they’re on page.
  • It raises the stakes way way too high at the end — AND I JUST WANT TO SAY I’M SCREAMING A BIT OK.
  • ALRIGHT FINE. A LOT. I’M SCREAMING A LOTTTTT.

Smoke and Iron is a masterfall addition to the series, where stakes are high, characters are screaming (or that’s me who’s screaming, IDK) and the story never lags as it races us towards the terrifying finale. The Library’s corruption is falling. There are monsters and murders. Betrayals and sacrifices for the ones you love so much. And it’s all so strongly rooted in friendship that I just ADORE EVERY PAGE.

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are you a fan of the Great Library series?! who’s your favourite character?? or tell me a series you like that has books and bookworm appreciation in it?!

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Comments

  1. I can confirm that I know no other Furies, but you would still be my favorite if I did.

    Just so you know, I legit started a “Cait recommends” shelf on Goodreads so I would remember which books you love and I should prioritize #sorrynotsorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So now I’ve added Ink and Bone to it because I have it but I haven’t read it yet! (And also And I Darken lol)

    I entered the giveaway but I’m INTL and no idea if I qualify. If I don’t please forgive meeee

    Reply

    • Awww !!! *sniffles happily* YOUR FAVOURITE FURY. I should hopefully beat the Greek Furies too right?? I think I’m cuter.

      Also omg a Cait Recommends shelf. This is the best news of my day.😂💛💛(I’m assuming the giveaway is INT haha. I didn’t get told it was US only?)

      Reply

  2. I`ll admit, I`m not that familiar with the author, but your comments make me want to pick up the series ASAP. It sounds great, and having a dragon is always a good idea.

    Reply

  3. I just read Ink & Bone for the first time a couple weeks ago and absolutely loved it! Big fan of Rachel Caine’s Stillhouse Lake series and so thought I’d give The Great Library series a try – the 1st one did not disappoint! Now to get caught up…!!! SO MUCH PRESSURE.

    Reply

    • AHHH I’M SO GLAD YOU LOVE IT TOO!! 💛💛 And it’s a good time to get caught up too, because I think there’s only one more book after this?!? I’m so nervously excited haha.

      Reply

  4. Ahhh, I know lots of people love the Great Library Series, but . . . but . . . I don’t. I love the idea! The way you write about it makes me want to jump into Book 2 to see if I like it any better than book 1! But I just didn’t care about the characters. Like, Jess is about to get mauled by an electronic lion? . . . Okay. Fine. Whatever.
    I must say, though, the world was pretty brilliant.

    Reply

  5. This series sounds so good and yet here I am…having not read it…really wishing to read it but I’ve already got to many books on my physical library tbr.

    I actually can’t think of a series that I’ve read that does bookish appreciation but I think Eliza and Her Monsters had a very good representation of what it’s like to read a series so good it destroys you. And that also had great fandom appreciation! And I just love that book! So much!

    Reply

    • Honestly that’s just me with every series ever.😂My TBR softly screams, no please don’t, and I start a new series anyway. *flings confetti of destruction over self* Life is too short to be sensible.

      Oh yes! Eliza and Her Monsters was amazing for being in love with book series.😭💛💛And for destroying our hearts.

      Reply

  6. Haven’t read this book before but I’m adding it to my TBR because DRAGON and BOOK LOVERS! I always love books that give appreciation to book lovers.

    I love characters who are bookdragons (as I’d like to call book lovers) like Tessa and Will from The Infernal Devices. Then there’s Celaena/Aelin and Dorian from Throne of Glass. I love it when they go fangirl/boy mode when they read books. #relate

    I’m looking forward to reading this series 😊

    Reply

    • It’s the best right?! It’s the most RELATABLE thing ever ahhhh. I love bookdragon characters so much. (Also there is an actual dragon here, so that just counts for double points of awesome.😂)

      Reply

  7. You see that pile of bones and emotions in the corner? That’s me because I am DYING to read Smoke and Iron. My library does not have it yet, and therefore I am deceased.

    P.S. Couldn’t tell if the Exclusive Blog was US or AU or Timbuktu only, so I entered, but if there is a specification I didn’t see, feel free to ignore me.

    Reply

    • I’m actually not sure about the giveaway tbh😂😂I assume it’s INT since it doesn’t say US only? (YES I’M VERY ORGANISED.😂) But yes yes you need Smoke and Iron because you need this kind of trauma in your life. <3

      Reply

  10. Oooh I definitely need to try these!!!! I love their matching titles and covers – they’re so perfect! 😍😍
    Thanks for yet another fabulous review, Cait!

    Reply

  11. This series. I SHRIEK. Until I finished this one I actually for some reason had it in my head that there another two books to come out after Smoke & Iron but. Nope EVERYTHING IS COMING TO A HEAD IN ONLY ONE MORE BOOK.

    This series startled me by becoming one of my favourites, honestly. I didn’t expect that after reading the first book but I feel like each book gets better and better (and they’re so pretty. So so pretty). They went and brought in interesting characters and compelling arcs and moral ambiguity and fraught politics. I do love fraught fantasy politics. I’m so excited/fearful to see what the last book has in store for us.

    Reply

    • OMG WE ARE NOT READY FOR THE FINALE. IT’S GOING TO EAT OUR HEARTS OUT, I’M SO SURE OF IT AHHH. And omg I’m so obsessed! I love the characters and I think about them all the time. 😍And not a single book seemed to drag or be unnecessary to the plot?! Pure talent I am SO excited about them. Plus the gorgeousness.😍😍

      Reply

      • I really admire the plotting of this series! There isn’t a point where anything that happens feels like it doesn’t contribute in some way to the story (either the plot or characters or worldbuilding… usually more than one of those things, actually) and I find I really go through them fast. It’s like there’s not good place to put the book down so I just keep reading. (Even the ending of the book… is not a great place to put it down. Rachel Caine really has a thing for tense endings, huh?)

        Reply

  12. MY GOD! I love The Great Library! IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO MY SANTI AND WOLFE, I WILL SELL MY SOUL TO HAVE THEM HAPPY! I swear, I am filled with dread at how the final book will turn out. My favorite character is Khalila. She is just the sharp edge between tenderness and danger. I can’t decide if I want to be her and be with her. I’m so glad to find a wonderful character development in Dario, btw. My fashionable cutthroat. *sigh* I have so much to say about this book, but I just…I think my review is going to be long and full of shrieking.

    Reply

    • I KNOW RIGHT?! It’s like, ok fine, mess up all the other characters but hOw dARe WOLFE AND SANTI noT GET theIR HAppILY EVER aFTER. (I’m rooting for them to survive all of this and not, also, murder Jess out of annoyance. 😂) Khalila is so perfect I love her so much. She’s so sweet and kind but never lets that take power away from her?! SO well written omg.

      Reply

  13. Um, Lazlo (best name ever!) from Strange the Dreamer. That kid. I just <3 <3 <3

    The book is beautiful and full of books and everything that I needed in life (tho I seriously need to read Rachel Caine's books, so)

    Reply

  14. I LOVE THIS SERIES SO MUCH!!!! AND AAKDSHDFJHGFDHJADHGAFDHSGD WOLFE AND KHALILA HAVE PERSPECTIVES?!?!?!?!?! I DID NOT KNOW THIS AND I AM FLAILING SO MUCH!!!!!!!

    (Are the giveaways open internationally?)

    Reply

    • Ahhh I hope you like it when you start it. It’s SO tight and clever and complex and just thoroughly engaging the whole time.😍 And why yes I will gush forever. 😂😂

      Reply
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