Book Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Laini Taylor

Publication Date: September 27th 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

Pages: 417

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Young Adult

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war. 

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages—not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers—beautiful, haunted Akiva—fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

This book has been teasing me for a while, so I finally picked it up and was sucked into this world immediately. Taylor has a style of prose that is hard to resist and Karou is a character who is unique and independent, although lonely. I love how it starts out with her feeling a bit at her lowest, and I love how all the characters are introduced.

The world and out of the ordinary characters are introduced first as being just sketches, but then we start to realize, that what Karou is drawing is one-hundred percent real to her. We then slip into her two worlds that seem part fairytale and part fantastical and all intriguing. The first third of the book is setting this world and this heroine up, and then the middle is where everything pretty much goes wrong, while sucking me in and not letting me put the book down, the end however is where Taylor's writing abilities truly shine. She fills in all the holes in such a poetic way that it feels like a puzzle coming together. It had been far from what I expected, but truly helps to make things feel a little less insta-love for the main two.

The only complaint I have, is that I wish we had had more of Karou in her everyday life, before things start going to hell, because reading that was possibly the most entertaining part of the book.

As you all probably know by now I am a sucker for amazing world building, and the way the two worlds fit together and the fight between the Seraphim and Chimaera are so perfectly a representation of angels versus devils. Yet everything is not clear cut good vs evil, I tend to agree with Karou that it seems as if the Chimaera are the one who got the short end of the stick in the war, but I can't disagree that Thiago isn't a war war-loving brute.

It really feels like things might be able to change, though, and that will keep me coming back for the next book when it comes out.

I do think, however, that there it was slightly overdramatic at the end and bumpy with the instant feeling of betrayal right after she declared everlasting love for Akiva. I also like the character of Karou much more than the character of Madrigal, who appears very flat in comparison. Seriously Karou is incredibly kickass, while Madrigal is just "meh".

This a unique book I'd recommend to many people, especially if they like out of the ordinary fantasy novels and quirky main characters. The prose is also very excellent, so I recommend because of that as well.

4.5 Bookmarks