Daughter of Smoke & Bone
Laini Taylor
Genre: YA Fantasy
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?
I think I might be on a island here with my opinion of this book. I have talked to lots of people who loved it. And there were parts of this book I enjoyed, but lots I didn’t. I could have done without the entire first half of the book. But I liked the characters and where she left the story at the end of the book.
Plot: It took awhile for me to become engaged with the story. For the longest time I had no idea what the main character’s goal was, what she was working towards or trying to do: what motivated her. Karou’s story felt aimless until the second half. And there was an utter lack of a romantic story line in the first half. Now, though I am a sucker for a good romantic storyline, I don’t require it in the books I read. However, for some reason, from the beginning of this book, it felt like there was an epic-love-story-shaped hole in the plot. Like it was supposed to be there but wasn’t. It felt like I should be rooting for some couple, but I had no idea who that couple was. And when the fireworks between Karou and her man started, it felt super cheesetastic.
All this being said, I LOVED the second half of the book. I wish there would have been more in that setting or that the author started there. The love story was epic and beautiful and what I wanted from the start. And the goals were there all of a sudden and the fears of what stood in the way were real and vibrant.
Characters: The characters were my favorite part of this book. The banter between Karou and her best friend had me smiling and laughing out loud sometimes. I adored Karou’s spunk and sarcasm and Laini does an excellent job of helping you feel the character’s emotions. I also liked the balancing of her personality with the steady, brusk one of Brimstone.
Pace: Very low, at least in the beginning. In my opinion, she could have scraped the first half of the book and started in the middle. I loved the dialogue between characters, but even I had to admit at times there was too much and it disrupted the flow of the story.
Setting/World-Buildling: Again, I thought the setting and world building was much more vibrant in the second half of the book. Maybe that’s because I love fantasy and prefer made-up worlds to real ones, but everything else in felt blah to me.
The Jist
What I Liked: The characters and their dialogue; the second half of the book.
What I Didn’t Like: The first half of the book; the slow starting pace; lack of romantic storyline in the beginning when it felt like it should be there; falling in love for no explainable reason (BIG pet peeve of mine).
Would I Recommend It? Probably not, though I have heard the second and third books are good so it my verdict might change after I read those.
My Rating: 2.5/5 Lunas
