By the time the first book, Smoke and Shadows kicks off, Tony is attempting to gain some semblance of independence from his relationship with Henry. Sure, Henry helped get him off the street and got him clean, but a relationship with a 450 year old vampire, and one that's the illegitimate son of Henry VIII, can't be a healthy one.
With dreams of someday directing, Tony has started working at a production studio that, ironically enough, makes a detective vampire TV series called Darkest Night. As the studio's only production assistant, he finds his work days quite busy, but given the limited staff and penny-pinching nature of the studio's owner, Chester Bane, he is also learning many different facets of the entire process.
For the most part, Tony's life is going well. His work is interesting and it keeps him busy and he has a serious crush on one of the show's co-stars. Too bad Lee is as straight as they come and is often photographed with a new blond on his arm at every event. Unfortunately, the normal, albeit chaotic, life Tony has settled into gets disturbed when he starts noticing that shadows are behaving in ways they shouldn't. As he starts to look into his co-workers' unusual behaviors, he learns that CB Production's only special effects wizard is, well, a real wizard, but she isn't the source of the unusual activity, at least not directly. Tony, Henry and their new, reluctant companion, Aara, team up to stop the supernatural shenanigans. By the end of Smoke and Shadows, Tony will not only help stop the threat, but he will also learn something new about himself...
... okay, it's that he has the ability to become a wizard as well. Sorry for the minor spoiler, but it will be pretty hard to dance around that aspect when talking about the next two books. Besides, the back of The Complete Smoke Trilogy kinda spoils that already.
In Smoke and Mirrors, Tony and the crew of Darkest Night are filming on location in a creepy old mansion, and, yup, you guessed it, it's haunted. When the cast and crew end up running late and are inside after nightfall, the doors slam shut and the many murder/suicides that have plagued the house's history start to manifest themselves by replaying their deaths over and over again. It seems there is something in the house that likes to drive people crazy and force them to kill others before taking their own life, and with each death, the presence grows stronger and stronger.
It's up to Tony, a fledgling wizard who has only half-heartedly started learning how to use his newly discovered talent, to help keep his coworkers alive until the sun comes up. While Tony seems to be the only one who can actually see the different ghosts re-enact their deaths, it quickly becomes apparent that those who were directly affected by the previous adventure are susceptible to the house's influence as well. To make matters even more annoying, Brianna and Ashley Bane, the young daughters of Chester Bane, were on location filming a small cameo. So, not only does Tony have to deal with the normal cast and crew, including his crush, Lee, his ex-boyfriend, Zev and the show's diva star Mason, but he has a pair of tweens in the mix, one of whom seems to be almost as sensitive to the house as Tony himself. Even if Tony makes it out alive, if anything were to happen to the girls, it won't end well for the studio's PA.
Meanwhile, Henry finds himself unable to protect Tony in any way as he is stuck outside of the house along with various other employees of CB Productions, including Chester Bane himself. When the cops who stuck their noses in the previous events show up to see that everything is in order, Henry and C. B. have to talk fast to keep the constables from getting too suspicious.
The last book in the series, Smoke and Ashes, throws the cast and crew of CB Productions in to yet another supernatural frying pan. When Tony uncovers the true identity of a stunt woman, it seems to be at just the right time to save her, and possibly the world. It seems the Leah isn't just good with jumping off of tall buildings and driving fast cars, she is also a 3,500 year old handmaiden to a demon that left the Earth after slaughtering her village. In an attempt to leave the door cracked behind it, the demon left its gate tattooed on Leah's body designed to reopen and let it back onto the Earth upon her death. Unfortunately for the demon lord, a messed up part of the spell designed to protect the gate from harm also protects Leah, thus the unexpected immortality. When something is about to hurt her, fate or chance or whatever, steps in and keeps the danger from getting to her.
When Tony discovers Leah, she tells him that there is an event called a Demonic Convergence starting up. When these happen, energy starts to wear holes in the fabric of reality and the border between Earth and the various hells that the demons live in gets thin enough to let monsters through. Good thing there's a wizard around, too bad it's Tony. While he has been training more since the events of the haunted house, he still isn't what you would call a fully-fledged wizard, as he still has quite a lot to learn.
At first though, it looks like the task ahead of Tony won't be that difficult. Leah will show him where the holes are forming and she will teach him how to fix them. If a demon gets through, it shouldn't be all that powerful this early in the Demonic Convergence and she will give him pointers on how to send it back where it belongs. As you might expect though, it's never that simple. When a larger-than-expected demon breaks through and actually hurts Leah, she and Tony realize that the demon lord she is holding at bay might have figured out a way to get around her unexpected protection. If they want to keep the demon from re-opening his gate and letting all hell out, Tony is going to have to keep Leah alive.
The Smoke Trilogy is a fun trio of adventures and a great extension to the original Blood series. With the exception of a few short stories, like the one found in Shadowed Souls, Tanya Huff hasn't frequented this universe in a while, so it was nice to go back and visit with these characters after so long away. While I feel like it's possible to pick up The Shadow Trilogy without having read the Blood series ahead of time, many of the past trials and tribulations that Tony and Henry have already gone through are only half-heartedly mentioned when necessary and a lot of the details about their particular relationship are fully explored and built up in the earlier series. It would be best to start this adventure with 1991's Blood Price, so you won't be disappointed.
