Book Review :: Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
Series: Daughter of Smoke & Bone #1
on September 27th 2011
Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Supernatural, Young Adult
Pages: 422
Goodreads

Around the world, black hand prints 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 grows dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly 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 beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery 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?

Last updated on 19 January 2022

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The story: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Daughter of Smoke and Bone tells of Karou, a blue-haired seventeen-year-old art student in Prague who leads a double life. In one, she’s Karou the artist, complaining about her teachers, going out with her best friend to their local café/diner, avoiding her ex-boyfriend and living in a small apartment by herself. In the other, she’s Karou the messenger to Brimstone, a monster-like creature (chimaera), who isn’t from this world but from Elsewhere, and who is the closest thing she has to family.

Brimstone’s work is a mystery to Karou; she just goes where he tells her and collects teeth from suppliers. You read correctly: teeth. As the story goes on, the doors are being closed to Elsewhere all over the world, and strange winged figures are spotted everywhere. When the door to the shop that the chimaera live in is shut and marked with a black hand print, Karou can longer get in contact with Brimstone and the others.

“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.”

She meets Akiva, a seraphim, or angel, who eventually tells her the answers to all her questions about what’s going on, why she has been in Brimstone’s care for as long as she can remember, why she has eyes tattooed on her palms, and why there is a door to an entire city in the basement of Brimstone’s store. And it’s not what she expected.

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My thoughts on Daughter of Smoke and Bone

With twists and turns, fallen angels, incredibly kind chimaera – or demons – beads that grant wishes, a hilarious best friend, and untold stories from the past, this was a great read, with page turning events and interesting – and some of the time disturbing – characters.

Laini Taylor has a great writing style, I found, and has the right balance of description, dialogue and background story, something which often annoys me in other books. I really enjoyed the spin she’s put on the sort of classic demon=bad, angel=good idea, and, perhaps it’s because Karou is the main character, but it was written in a way that I found myself liking the demon in the story a lot more than the angel. And let’s face it, that doesn’t happen often, does it?

“Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there’s no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.”

One thing that you may have to look out for if you read this is that it does jump back in time quite a bit, and can get a little confusing if you weren’t paying attention to that one important “we’re-jumping-back-in-time-now” sentence.

But I do recommend it if you’re a fantasy lover. I haven’t read a fantasy book in a while, although it’s my favourite genre, because I’ve been reading so many dystopian novels, but I’m glad that I read this one!

The next books in the series are Days of Blood and Starlight, and Dreams of Gods & Monsters. Looking forward to reading them and continuing Karou’s story!

Have you read Daughter of Smoke and Bone?

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Originally posted on Blogger’s Bookshelf.