Smoke by Joe Ide
IQ is back!
He’s trying to recover from serious trauma from his white-knight-in-the-hood exploits in East LA. The problem with trying to help people in trouble is that you encounter a lot of trouble, including violence and threats to everyone you care about. IQ has PTSD (at least, self-diagnosed), and decides to head out of LA into the Sierra’s.
It’s quite and peaceful and a revelation to him. He is able to relax for a short time. He even discovers the joy of playing with children. It’s really nice.
But stuff happens. Old enemies are stalking him and his loved ones. Other people face mortal dangers even out in the boonies. And, inevitably, people in trouble wash up on IQ’s doorstep, and he can’t not help them.
IQ’s friends back in LA make some moves without him, too. Dodson gets a job (I know!), Grace gets a one-woman show. And they handle things in LA without IQ. Not that everyone doesn’t miss him.
There is a lot of IQ-y goodness here, with more to come we know.
Unfortunately…
I was dissatisfied with this book. It’s not really up to what we know Ide can deliver.
The villains are cartoonish. Gross, ugly, and mindlessly evil. Saying they are one-dimensional is an insult to Mobius Strips. They would have to gain a lot of depth to make it to 1-D.
A lot of the action is rushed and sketchy, especially the ending. There is precious little of IQ’s patent think-it-out, and a whole lot of running-driving-as-fast-as-possible-into-danger. This is not the IQ at his best.
You know what this reminds me of? It’s like a video game. One extreme fight after another, mindless NPCs that just keep coming for no discernable reason. Sigh.
On a more serious point: the portrayal of PTSD and other psychological problems is sketchy and hard to follow. He tries to portray irrational, harmful thoughts through an internal dialog . But this makes no sense (obviously). This may or may not be accurate, but it’s real hard to understand on the page, especially as the episodes come and go unpredictably.
Ide has a valid point about the costs of IQ’s do gooding, but it’s really hard to tell stories from that point of view.
The bottom line is that this isn’t the best of Ide. It ends on a cliff hanger, so we can hope the next story will be a bit tighter. And let’s get IQ and Grace back to the good place we know they should be in.
- Joe Ide, Smoke, New York, Little, Brown and Company, 2021.
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