Smoke Eaters

SMOKE EATERS by Sean Grigsby

George Carlin once said “It takes a genius to point out the obvious.” In Sean Grigsby's debut novel, SMOKE EATERS, instead of the tired trope of using knights and warriors to battle a scaly menace, he has firefighters fighting dragons and ghosts (yes, I said dragons AND ghosts–it's pretty awesome). He might not be the first one to try that combo, but his execution of this concept is pretty genius, and it's a brilliant ride.

The main character, Brannigan, is on his way out of the job, a job that's only gotten harder since E-Day, the day the dragons emerged from underground. He's fought fires for thirty years, and it's time to retire, to settle down. However, just days before his retirement, Brannigan finds out he's a Smoke Eater, nearly immune to smoke and heat. From there, he gets tossed into the Smoker Eaters brigade, a sort of futuristic, power-suited, balls-to-the-wall brand of firefighters whose job is to kill dragons and defend people from wraiths, the ghosts of those killed by dragonfire.

If all that wasn't enough, there's something fishy about the goings-on of the higher-ups in the administration of Parthenon City, and Brannigan has to content with real dragons, as well as the dragons of a corrupt bureaucracy.

The prose is slick and easy. The dialogue sounds crisp and real. And, thanks to Grigsby's background as a firefighter, the technical aspects of the book feel very real, even if they're done in an over-the-top, worthy-of-an-action-movie-starring-The Rock-sort of way.

SMOKE EATERS, in many ways, is an homage to Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR (at one point in the book, Brannigan even reads that book). It's a worthy tribute because the head nods to Scalzi are not subtle, but at the same time, SMOKE EATERS blazes its own glorious path. Definitely worth checking out.