Between the Pages: Smith by Sam B. Miller

Smith by Sam B. Miller is an action-packed story that takes you to several different places in the world. We start off in Jake’s point of view in Israel. He is there with his father and is extremely bored from walking around the city he’s in. So he goes looking for adventure. On this adventure, he discovers this ring. He puts it on, and soon the ring starts talking to him. The ring, named Smith, drags him into an over millennia long feud, along with Jake’s loved ones.

I really loved Jake. He was an interesting character to read about. He wasn’t the brooding male character that I was expecting, which I was pleasantly surprised about. He was just an eighteen-year-old looking for an adventure, and that’s just what he got. Then he found the ring. I really loved that Jake didn’t let Smith, the ring, change who he was, although Smith did help, and convince Jake to do things he wouldn’t normally do. By the end of the book, Jake still had the same morals, and was still who he was, although he learned a good life lesson. Really, Smith was like that one bad friend you have who convinces you to do stupid things. Like joining the army of a different nation.

Smith is the former ring of King Solomon, who was the former king of Israel. When Smith was too much for King Solomon to handle, he cut off his finger, and the ring, hiding it in the cave where Jake found Smith. Before that point, Smith hadn’t had any interaction with anyone for almost 3,000 years. I really enjoyed all the history behind Smith, and how close it ran to the truth. After I finished reading this book, out of curiosity, I did a bit of research on King Solomon, and Sam B. Miller did a great job of incorporating this information into the novel.

Now, there was another character introduced later in the story who I really enjoyed reading about, Nava. She was a strong, smart female character who was interesting to read about, especially in the dangerous setting that she was in, and how she handled it. Jake meets her after he is appointed to the Prime Minister of Israel’s personal guard. At first, she is extremely suspicious of how quickly Jake was accepted into the position, with the help of Smith, and isn’t very fond of Jake in the first place. Soon Nava learns about Smith and is actually able to contact him, as well as garner his approval. Eventually, Nava is sucked into the mess that Smith and Jake had made.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. It was a quick read but was still quite interesting. I would suggest to pick it up if you have any free time on your hands.