Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Author: Laini Taylor
Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1
Rating Out of 5: 4.5 (Amazing, but not quite perfect)
My Bookshelves: Angels, Demons, Paranormal fantasy
Pace: Medium
Format: Novel
Publisher: Little, Brown, Company
Year: 2011
5th sentence, 74th page: What do you think of me, that you think I’d just vanish like that?

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?

I read this in a lot of stop-start fits. It’s not that this wasn’t amazing (it was), it just wasn’t that amazingly fast-paced, grip you by the hair, drag you along kind of story. It was pleasantly paced. And that made it possible to put down and be a productive and useful member of the world. Or at least, it allowed me to do data analysis for a PhD…

Karou is everything that I wanted to be as a young teenager. An artist, free, living in a beautiful European city, and, probably most importantly, has blue hair and tattoos. I can imagine reading this as a teenager, and idolising Karou in so many ways. She would have been exactly what I wanted to be when I was sixteen-years-old. Now, ten years older, I still think that Karou is a wonderfully fun character. And one that I enjoy finding out more about as the trilogy unfolds.

The end of Daughter of Smoke and Bone was not what I expected in the slightest. It was a twist that I didn’t see coming, and one that was thrilling in its surprise. My first words when I finished this book was Oh My Freaking God! Yet, it wasn’t one of those surprises that didn’t fit into the storyline, it somehow fit perfectly. I can’t wait to find out what other surprises there are around the corner!

<- Dreams of Gods & Monsters Review

Days of Blood & Starlight Review ->

Image source: Amazon

Book Review Angels Daughter of Smoke and Bone Demons Laini Taylor Paranormal Fantasy