Home » Magic of Warbreaker Meets Spawn: Shadow and Smoke

Taking elements from noir in its various forms, “Shadow and Smoke” is a series that has threads of Ghost Rider or Spawn characters woven together with a magic system reminiscent of “Warbreaker’s” breath from Brandon Sanderson.

Warbreaker and its Magic System

Out of most of the books which have at least one magic system in Sanderson’s works, Warbreaker is the most basic and easy to understand if not a little soft when compared to works like Mistborn. Magic like allomancy in that series, by contrast, has a very hard magic system. Sanderson’s standalone work—originally written on his website as the chapters were written—Warbreaker’s breath is a bit too ambiguous for my taste. It’s a less graphic version of hemalurgy (also from Mistborn).

The relatively new audio drama, “Shadow and Smoke” from Thomas Díaz also has a relatively soft magic system in a world of the supernatural. I can’t tell you what “authority” is or how it works—aside from the one or two moments where a part of the magic is explained. That said, the magic is very much secondary to the characters and plot.

Narration and Information Flow

The main character is, for all intents and purposes, a hired gun who’s given a second chance at life after almost dying. The prologue sets up Blackwood’s motivation and reason for accepting the deal with the devil. Being on death’s door is a believable reason to want to survive. However, it’s not compelling. Instead, Blackwood’s motivation is more tied to anger and revenge than a fight or flight response.

After the prologue, some time has passed. Blackwood has a new target and he’s gotten some experience in using authority. It’s unclear whether this job is mostly personal or mostly part of his negotiation with the “devil.” Either way, he seems to be the one who wants to kill the person. The antagonist for some of the early episodes is a female “cop” who works for a magic casino owner. In a similar vein as Blackwood does (did?) for the devil.

“Casino Royale” for the Magical Soul

The poker game in the second episode is suspenseful when it has no reason being that tense. The narration of the game’s rules along with Blackwood’s thought processes somehow aren’t boring. They’re also only there to give the listener a mental image of the scene. Without it, we’d be listening to a bunch of finger tapping and the occasional voice saying: “Call” “Fold” or “All in.” Usually, this type of scene would be boring on the page or screen, but Blackwood’s voice actor made it an engaging listen.

Episodes three through seven deal with Amber and Blackwood’s partnership in a buddy cop-adjacent story that doesn’t really wrap up. Adjacent because both are seasoned killers, which makes this two hardened cops butting heads instead of the usual plot archetype. Amber’s reason for doing the Casino manager’s bidding is tied to what happens if she doesn’t have her powers.

There’s a flashback episode which provides new context as to why a character is present in a certain previous scene. It felt a bit unnecessary. The narration might not be some people’s cup of tea. However, “Shadow and Smoke” takes two fantastical elements seen in many speculative fiction works and puts them together. The end result is a different take on paranormal mystery stories in the audio drama space, but perhaps not in other media.

8/10 Stars


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