Daughter of Smoke & Bone

[...] Rating: 5 Scuppies I have heard praise for this book for so long from so many different people but now that I've finally read it I understand. The writing is beautiful. The world is so colorful and diverse and I was drawn in so quickly to the worlds and the wishes and doorways and everything else. Karou, our MC and artist who has tons of 'errands' to do and speaks several languages and natural blue hair and something mysterious about her. She lives in the human world but works in Elsewhere. She portals all over the globe and deals daily with the only family her orphan self has ever known, the Chimaera, a mixture of different human and animal parts/aspects. Each is different and unique. On an 'errand' one day Karou finds herself face to face with an angel, Akiva, one set on destroying Brimstone, the wishmonger and only father she has ever know, and blood is spilled. Still there is something about Karou that confuses and intrigues Akiva and he is determined to figure it out as Karou struggles to figure out her place in either world. I instantly knew why everyone loved this book. The characters are all unique and diverse. The Chimaera for sure had me thinking. I was adding in parts of them as she described them, with an artists eye of course, and just found myself both a bit freaked out by them and also totally loving how normal and natural Karou felt around them. They would be monsters to us, which she admits, but to her they are family. Karou, her name means home, and she has such amazing views. She's rather well rounded and grounded for her life to be what it is. She has found a place, in Prague, finally where she fits in. She has friends, OMG I love Zuzana. She is also always in the back of her mind wondering about the 'what if' of being an orphan. What her life could have been and who she could have been if things were different. She has blue hair, she used a wish on hair that comes out naturally that color. How awesome, it seems silly but it's a part of who she is. I love it. Now wishes. Here I need to take a moment to say how jealous I am. The languages. To be able to wish a language and have perfect understanding of it, who hasn't wished for that before. I know I have. I've tried learning a few but it feels next to impossible to learn alone it always seems like school work and not natural. Everything I've tried always tries to teach grammar first which kills my desire quickly. Anywho this book and the wishes, the different levels you can gain (Scuppy, Shing, Lucknow, Gavriel, and Bruxis) the most powerful of which I would never have. Each one has a cost and a level of which you can wish. The idea of a string of scuppies around my wrist, oh yeah I'd use those bad boys. I even know what I would do with some of the others and yes languages would be on the top of my list. Learning about each of them and the different things wished for is just fascinating. That doesn't even add that you don't have to use them to travel because you have special portals to go all over the world! How cool? I mean I could save so much time and money that way. The whole book has action in it for sure but there is a lot of unraveling to be done. The world is built up throughout the story but we keep peeling back layer after layer of the story diving into more and more of what is happening. Brimstone has kept Karou from most of the happenings of Elsewhere, he has lots of secrets. The whole story is a paranormal mystery with some romance and hilarity and action all rolled beautifully into one. I could not put this book down I was so captivated by it and the ending had me gasping and wishing I had the sequel there with me. Thankfully I don't have to wait long to read it, benefit of marathoning series when they are complete! Those are my thoughts on the story. I feel like I didn't do it justice but I think talking any more about certain aspects would ruin some of the best parts. I really enjoyed discovering everything for myself and while I did see several things coming I was always intrigued because of the way things came about. Plus again I can't say it enough the world was just beautiful! Oh and one side note I have is that after I read this I went online and saw a ton of images and people mentioning a graphic novel! How devastated was I to learn that there was a graphic novel sampler sent out to very few years ago but since then there has been no full novel put out  I know I'm new to this party but whoever is in charge of this please get on this ASAP! This is the perfect book to do in graphic novel form with all the creatures, art, worlds, and eye catching things (I mean our MC has blue hair how beautiful). Pretty please make it happen.

It's been awhile since I have picked up a paranormal romance. This one has been sitting on my shelf FOREVER, and despite hearing glowing reviews for it, I just couldn't pull up the enthusiasm to begin it. All I can say is ... I am super glad that I waited to begin this series until it is almost completed. I don' think I could have handled a long wait to find out what happens next for these characters. As it is, with the heartbreaking/surprising ending to this story I am planning on waiting to start the second book until right before the publication of the final book in the series. I don't think that my heart is ready for too much sadness and difficulty unless I know that the (hopefully) happy ending is sitting on my kindle, waiting to be read right away. This is a love story ... an epic love story. It is a love story that has been done over and over and over again. Two people (or angels or chimaera or monsters or whatever you choose) meet up. They come from two different groups who hate one another for different reasons. Love blooms. Differences melt away. Hope runs freely ... until it doesn't. Tragedy strikes. Love is not enough to keep the couple together. Etc. Etc. Etc. Like I say, this is a story that has been done before. But the reason that is has been done so often is because the story line is so intriguing. We want to believe that peace is possible between two peoples or groups who have not known peace before. We want to believe that love can conquer all. So we read ... and we hope. For those of you instalove haters out there, you should know that there is a good amount of instalove going on in this story. But I think that it works in the context of these particular characters and what they represent. Especially when you know the entire history of these two, the instant attraction makes a ton of sense. Karou is a blue-haired art student in Prague who has a side job as a messenger/collector for Brimstone, a chimaera beast who collects lots and lots of teeth from this world. There is significance to these teeth, but we don't see why for a good portion of the novel. On one of these runs for teeth Karou encounters a seraphim soldier named Akiva. Things don't go smoothly during this first meeting. Akiva almost kills Karou ... but doesn't. She intrigues him for some reason, so he finds her again and discovers something REALLY interesting about her that I won't reveal here. I'll just say that Karou is much more than the human girl she believes herself to be. What follows is an intense love connection that, in the scope of things, really doesn't last all that long. This really does follow a Romeo and Juliet sort of story arc where the main characters find tragedy simply by figuring out the truth too late to prevent horrible things from happening. As for the writing ... this is probably the best story of this genre involving seraphim and chimaera that I have ever read. It seems fresh and interesting. The love story is pretty strong, but I can tell that although the love story is essential to the progression of the series, it is not simply going to be this sappy gooey eyed love fest with a plot thrown around it. There are bigger themes and richer plot lines that are simply enhanced by the epic love that drives (hopefully) these characters and their actions. I admit that I was not so excited to read the back story involving Madrigal, but it is essential to understanding exactly how tragic Akiva's final revelation at the end of this book is. It really creates a moment where you can just feel the stake driven straight through your heart. Timing is everything! Ugh! Karou and Akiva are good lead characters for this story. I really appreciated that this story was told in third person so that we could see multiple angles of the action. I still feel like there is so much more to know about each of them, especially after the final scene of the book. Future installments of this series will show whether or not these two have staying power as leads or if they turn into cardboard cutouts of token lovers torn apart by heartache with little else to define them. Normally after an ending like this one I would be clamoring to get my hands on book two, but I expect A LOT of bad things to happen before this story starts to turn in the right direction, so I'll hold off for a couple of months until book three arrives. Still, I do recommend this book for those looking for an epic romance in the midst of an interesting and unique paranormal world. Four stars!

This is really more along the lines of four and a half stars, but five works just as well. Ahh. 2011. What a crappy time to be an adult reading young adult literature. Like many, I suspect, I had been burned by the young adult genre, and burned badly. I bought books in series where the plot was stretched thin to accommodate the obligatory three other books in the quartet (all hoping for a film franchise because, come on). I read books where the unbelievably plain girl (who everyone else thinks is amazingly gorgeous) ends up with the male co-lead who treated her like dirt for a quarter of the book. I read books that found ridiculous, convoluted reasons for the couple to not get together, so that I had to keep reading in “hopes” that they did. I rolled my eyes at the number of Duckie, best-friend-who-passive-aggresively-wants-to-be-more-and-glowers-about-it-while-insisting-he’s-a-nice-guy’s. Books with love triangles for no reason other than to give readers something to argue over. A lot of these books, I was sort of asking for it from. Some of them, I really wasn’t. Most of them went back and I continued my search. I wanted to find ones I honestly liked, but I was losing faith and getting burnt out. It was dark, dark times, friends. I knew about Daughter of Smoke and Bone when it first was published. I avoided it like the plague. Nay. I avoided it like the young adult supernatural romance genre because that was more terrifying than bubonic. At least, it had spread like bubonic and made me feel dirty to come into contact with it. I didn’t read the series until 2013 when I borrowed it from the public library. Ha! Disappoint me if you will, at least I would be disappointed for free. I was not disappointed. I wish I had read Daughter of Smoke and Bone earlier. It’s pretty much exactly what I was combing through endless clones for. It had plot and character, length without filler, a prose I could actually love, and something I’d found oddly missing from the fantasy genre: worldbuilding. Daughter of Smoke and Bone is equal parts teen romance and Jim Henson. And I mean dark Jim Henson, circa Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. The fantasy elements of the book are so dark but so grounded and easy to except. There was no suspension of disbelief because Laini Taylor makes the world live and breathe and bleed. You know that wide-eyed look most of us had with Diagon Alley in the first Harry Potter book? That’s the one. Best of all, it’s one of those young adult entries that earns the title young adult. Karou’s quest for identity, love, and family and truth feels personal, and I can care about it because it’s so humanized. Karous herself is likeable because she stands out as a heroine. Her insecurities feel real without the need to make her sound self-loathing, which is a real plus in a genre with female leads who must find themselves ugly and stupid and boring so as to appear humble. Because you can only earn your unbelievably, enviously hot boyfriend if you don’t like yourself too much. I mean, how else can you devout all your time to him? How else can he rebuild your self-esteem? I’m getting off point. There is a romance in the book, but it’s more on the back burner because Karou first and foremost is concerned for her family of monsters, most concerned with finding out who she is, and most concerned with staying alive. Akiva’s arrival is at best a catalyst at this point, not the sum total of Karou’s concerns. There isn’t much to him yet, and that might be a problem for some readers. For me, I was braced to wait until the next book to pass judgment. Series, I usually rationalize, are one big story. If the payoff is there, I can wait. As long as my goodwill is not squandered. Besides, Karou is who I cared about here. If I had to point to any detractors, I think others have pointed out the latter half of the book contains a reveal that is less of a twist and more an ‘of course’. I won’t outright call it a cliché, but I spent a good chunk of the book hoping that wasn’t the twist, just so that it would be something else. It isn’t disappointing, per se, I had just wanted the book to aspire to be a little different. It’s a small nit to pick, but there it is. You could also find fault with the fact that Akiva almost falls in line with the other hostile male leads that inexplicably fall in love with the heroine after attempting to harm them in some way. For me, context mattered, and context was there later in the series. I can see it being an issue for others, it just wasn’t for me (it also mattered that he outright showed remorse. He didn’t shrug his shoulders and expect Karou to get over it. So point to him). She also doesn’t handwave his attack. There is introspection and not just, I’m not fussed about it, let’s just move on. Lastly, I can see putting an age on the book of fifteen or sixteen and up because of references to sex that aren’t exactly oblique. For some that could be a deal breaker. Others will find it refreshing: teenage girls do talk about sex. They have their hearts broken. They get suckered in by emotional conartists. In my eyes, the more fantastic the story, the more grounded the human experience needs to be. Karou has a hell of a story in front of her, but she also has very human, believable experiences that have formed her. it’s what makes reading about a schoolgirl having adventures work: she’s recognizable. And for what it’s worth, the next book in the series might be even better. This is my favorite for reasons I can’t get into, but I can say that the next book does not fall into that trap of filler middle book syndrome so many series suffer from.

**Warning, This review contains some mild spoilers** Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well. Ok, so I'll admit that if this hadn't been a BOTM for the Vaginal Fantasy Hangout, I probably wouldn't have read it, and I would have missed out on a wonderful book. As the line above from the beginning of the book indicates, it's not a happy book by any means, though there are moments of pure joy for the characters, and the way that Karou keeps rolling with the punches so to speak is quite inspiring. She never gives up hope, which, incidentally, is one of the major themes here. Hope, and the power it can wield. Karou is a 17 year old art student living in Prague who is really quite mature for her age, though not without a fair measure of "teenager" left in her as well. She comes from a rather unique background: she is human, but she grew up as the foster child of "demons" in an otherworldly workshop owned and run by Brimstone, a chimaera and a sorcerer, though Karou isn't aware of what he's really doing for most of her life with him. She knows he collects teeth, and strings them into necklaces for some reason, but she doesn't know what that reason is, and he refuses to enlighten her. Thus, she grows up around magic, and learns how to utilize it in small degrees herself, primarily by utilizing "wishes" that Brimstone creates as beads and coins. She has a fairly good life with her classes and friends in Prague, and Brimstone and his helpers that she's grown up with in the workshop, but it slowly starts to unravel due to things that have been going on all along that she's known nothing about. Unfortunately, she'll soon learn more than she ever wanted to know about what's been going on, who she really is, and where she really came from. She has to finish growing up fast, but she's more than up to the task, and her unyielding will and determination make her a force to be reckoned with. Akiva is a seraphim, an angel, and the mortal enemy of the chimaera that Karou grew up amongst. He does have more of conscience than most of his kind, however, as well as an understanding of and sympathy for the chimaera that is unique among them. One of the legion of bastard offspring of the seraphim Emperor, he has been trained as a fierce warrior, though he also possesses something of an affinity for magic from his mother. His life has been fairly stark, ruled by training and warfare, and for most of his life he was pretty much a carbon copy of all of the rest of his brothers and sisters. Until something happened that made him see things differently, and made him begin to question - but which also led to devastating heartbreak that nearly shattered his soul and left him with little but a burning need for vengeance. Along with a few of his brothers and sisters, he's part of carrying out a plan that they believe will lead to the end of the war, and in the course of doing his part, he happens to see Karou, and is instantly intrigued despite himself. As I noted above, this book is more than a little dark in tone, with a an end-of-days type sense of despair running beneath the surface in places (and fully out in the open in others), but it's not all doom and gloom either. There are plenty of lighter moments scattered throughout, whether it be in the the characters' present day lives or in their memories that get retold, and woven strongly throughout is the message that hope is the greatest magic of all and the one thing that you must not let go of, for in many ways it's the one thing that can bring about true change. But as the saying goes, "it's always darkest before the dawn", and such is very much the case with this book, for after taking you on a rollercoaster ride of emotion in the last several chapters it rushes swiftly toward the edge of a cliff and then drops you over it into an abyss. I've no idea if this series will be headed toward any sort of happy ending eventually or not, but it's a bit hard to see how it will come about given the state of things at the end of this book. I'll definitely be looking forward to reading the next one to see where things go next and whether or not there's an HEA anywhere in sight. This is very much a 5 star read with a multi-layered plot and multi-faceted characters that endear themselves to you and break your heart. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy, particularly dark fantasy, or who likes stories that explore the ages-old battle between good and evil in different ways. Even if you're not a fan of Young Adult books, consider giving this one a try if your interests are in any way compatible with these genres. You probably won't be disappointed if you do.

As this is not really a suspense/mystery book, I can let go of the fact that some of the mysteries were not all that mysterious to me. Also the main mysteries like the meaning behind the palm eyes and why teeth can be exchanged for wishes are not among the ones I figured out fully before the reveal. The book's world is pretty unique, the ideas are great and most of the characters are intriguing and endearing. The world building was fascinating, fresh, and carefully constructed. The reasons I could not give this book a high star rating is because love was lacking sustenance and the main female character, Karou's escapism irritated me a bit. I don't give too much away so... **Contains Vague-ish Spoilers:** The love or romance is basically inconceivable. After Madrigal and Akiva's first meeting of about five minutes and a few sentences they become intrigued and preoccupied with thoughts of each other. Akiva becomes infatuated enough to go to extreme and dangerous lengths to see her again. They meet years later and start their relationship on their second meeting. They are together only for a month (page 388) and their encounters are not really detailed in a manner that I see it building into love, yet I'm supposed to believe their love for each other was soul shatteringly deep. For me the romance was physical attraction turned love too quickly and in a slapdash fashion to be believable. And then while Akiva is supposed to be hardhearted after Madrigal, his and Karou's love manifests within a few days after their second meeting. This one was even harder to take as their acquaintance started off murderously and they were supposedly enemies and strangers. How can all that be overcome in a matter of days? I just don't know. As for why Karou exasperated me: She wants to ascertain the fate of her abruptly incommunicado family and has secured the means to do so, however she does not set out... Why, (page 166) her justification for the delaying is because she wants to say good-bye to her old life. She's also keeping a promise she made to her best friend. I get trying to be a person of your word and all, however, when someone dies in your arms (in front of said friend as well) you'd think she would have asked to get out of the promise, given up her desire towards good-byes, and left to start the mission of seeing if her family was safe, but she doesn't. After the promise is completed, she heads for her personal flat instead of setting off immediately and the following morning she nonchalantly invites, then stranger and enemy, Akiva to go get breakfast. Does she leave after breakfast, again no. She sets out on her "good-bye program." The reason she leaves as soon as she does is because she is forced to. I liked Karou in the beginning, however as her sense of urgency, quick actions, and fierce determination towards reuniting with her family waned, so did my regard. She gets her priorities mixed up, putting her interests before the distress of her family. She may be young (I can forgive her for other things for this reason) and rightfully fearful, but that does not quite excuse her for putting her family that reasonably could be dead, dying, or injured and in need of help on the backburner.

If you are the type to be irritated by too much teen fluff and vapid romance (yet another life-threatening - yet inexplicably magnetic, cold/hot, gorgeous, otherworldly love interest with rippling abs...), you might want to consider saving this book for later and going straight to book two, Days of Blood and Starlight, first. It will take a bit of perseverance to get through the confusion until you've sorted out all the names and what the hell is going on, and I confess the romance can still be annoying at times, but you will be rewarded with interesting characters, complex moral dilemmas, cool creatures and magic. If you've read any of Laini Taylor's other excellent books, you know it will be worth it. I confess I read the second book first by accident, loved it, and was thrilled to be able to spend more time with the characters by reading the first book next. I think it was a lucky blunder since I might have been disappointed in book one alone, but because I already knew the characters and liked them and understood their greater challenges, when they acted bizarrely, childishly or there was too much focus on less-meaty things like how beautiful everyone was, it was a minor distraction rather than a disappointing book wrecker. Furthermore, the lengthy flashback part which could have seemed boring and stupid was more appealing because reading it after already spending hundreds of pages with these characters made it feel akin to when you take a friendship to another level and tell each other about your pasts. I was satisfied to have some questions answered and felt happy for the characters in their happiness. And of course the abrupt ending lost its bile because I already read what happened next. I was already in the purgatory of the abrupt-but-better ending of book two, so being able to read book one while waiting for book three (not due out until April 2014) qseemed a sweet salve. In the end I love the books and see them as all one, complex story. It worked for me, maybe it will work for you, and to make it easier, here is a character cheat sheet. (The whole point is spoilers, so....) Karou She's our talented, blue-haired main character. Though she looks human and grew up thinking she was, she is what is known as a chimera. Not like the ones you know, chimera are creatures of any possible mixture of animals including humans. Akiva He's our hunky love interest. He is an angel, but the angels in this book are as little like the angels you know as the chimera are. No heaven here. The angels and chimera have been at war in a parallel universe for 1,000 years. Karou's troubled relationship with Akiva stems from their active enemy status. Liraz and Hazael Akiva hangs out with his fierce, jealous, devoted sister and good-hearted, likable brother who are both also soldiers in the Angel army. They do not understand his interest in Karou and can find themselves torn between their duties as soldiers and their loyalty to their brother. They are all illegitimate children of the emperor. Brimstone A ram-headed, chimera sorcerer who conjures new bodies in which to resurrect the souls of the dead, Brimstone is as close as Karou has to a father. It was (apparently) Brimstone who resurrected the executed chimera Madrigral as Karou and hid her in the human world. Issa, Twiga and Yasri Brimstone's snake, giraffe and parot chimera assistants are the rest of Karou's approximation of a family. Zuzana, Mik and Kaz Karou's spunky best friend, Zuzana's appealing boyfriend and Karou's irritating and forgettable ex-boyfriend. Thiago The chimera general and prince once wanted to marry the pre-Karou Madrigal and has never gotten over being dumped for the enemy angel. Razgut This fallen angel does not appear to be that big of a character, but he is instrumental in helping Karou get into Eretz, the chimera and angel's world.

This book could have been awful. It could have been written in a way that’s cliché, embarrassing to read, and featured characters that are beautiful for no reason and everyone loves them for little reason – a few things a lot of readers are getting sick of under the influx of paranormal romance titles. Instead, this book is wonderful. This book is for everyone who’s become scathing and disillusioned by YA – prepare to be pleasantly surprised. ~ Daughter of Smoke and Bone tells of a girl called Karou who lives a double life, sometimes in Prague, sometimes suddenly anywhere else in the world if her guardians so wish it – within minutes she could be in Saigon or Canada, San Francisco or Paris. This is because she runs errands for the creature who raised her, Brimstone; a hulking beast who has horns and a tail and a very deep voice – a chimera. He’s a wishmonger who takes payment in teeth (usually what Karou has to collect) and deals mostly with poachers and grave robbers. To do these errands, Brimstone sends Karou through a portal – he has a door in his store that links to numerous doors spread out all over the world, and it’s only on his command that she can use it. In return, she gets as many tiny and small wishes as she likes. There’s a rank to them, you see. Scuppy, shing, lucknow, gavriela and bruxis. Karou wears a necklace of scuppies and shings and can wish for a multitude of ‘small’ things – itches to those she wants to annoy, for people to move from her favourite place to sit, and for someone’s eyebrows to get bushy and horrid. When she isn’t running errands, Karou is an ordinary 17-year-old blue-haired girl. She’s an art student – most of her artwork featuring her monstrous family, all of whom have some human physical characteristics, but then mostly have some kind of animal – may it be a snake’s tail, giraffe’s neck, or feathers. Karou’s, main trouble in her normal life is finishing her art school homework on time and being bothered by her ex-boyfriend, but her tiny yet fiery friend called Zuzana makes those things easy to cope with. This is until it becomes clear that someone is marking the portal doors. And then someone starts following her. And then… well, you’ll just have to read to find out. ~ It’s hard to find any faults in this book. The start may be a little slow, but I found it to be comforting. The city of Prague is introduced carefully, showing its eccentricities and describing the landscape, and slowly the plot winds around you tighter and tighter until you’re unable to put the book down and you’re devouring the backstory, which is so cleverly revealed you hardly notice it’s slipping back to the past between sections of the present. The history in this book is in-depth – a clever mix of making you wish there was a whole series about it alone, yet also revealing so much eloquently that you don’t feel like we’re lacking knowledge. Taylor cleverly limits the reveals to what Karou alone knows and sees, so we’re left wondering the exact same thing as she is. One can assume what’s going to happen next, but at each and every turn we’re tricked by our own assumptions as the plot instead takes a new path. Yes, this is a book of angels and demons, features impossibly beautiful characters, finding true love you’ve lost, and the main character has a complicated childhood and doesn’t know who her family is… mostly clichés and well over-done in this new surge of paranormal romance, and yet, this book is utterly unique. One could say it’s similar to the work of Guillermo Del Toro with a hint of Neil Gaiman but only in the tone and beauty. The book has interesting chapter titles – something I always love – and divided into parts with a hint (of what’s to come) of a quote – “One upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.”, for example. Quite honestly? This didn’t read like YA to me. It certainly is written in a way that those 12 and above could read and enjoy it, but at no stage did I feel like I was reading a book for a market more than half my age. Nothing is ‘dumbed’ down or simplified. It’s simply a beautiful story of hope that anyone could read and enjoy.

I don't think I could adequately call myself a book blogger if I did not read or at least WANT to read this book. It exploded the blogosphere last year and it was one of the most raved/talked about books of 2011. I was nervous to start to reading it because of all the hype. I hate hate hate being disappointed with books, especially ones that I have been looking forward to reading. Hype is great for books, but sometimes it leaves readers with too high expectations. However, I have to say that this novel deserved every bit of hype it received. The Good: I'm trying to compose myself long enough to write a coherent review, but it's kind of difficult when I have a million things running through my head and several pieces of paper with chicken scratch notes about the novel. The one thing that I realized while reading is that it's impossible for me to describe to people what it's about. I've tried. I mean, essentially the book is about "angels" and "demons" but it seems that novel is so far removed from those two adjectives that it doesn't seem to do the book justice. It's SO much more than angels and demons. I've read plenty of angel/demon books and NONE of them have been like this book. It's not your typical biblical angels/demons thing. Taylor's world building is incredible in this novel. I mean, from Karou's blue hair and hamsas to Brimstone and his magical world to Akiva. It's honestly, so incredible to see how someone's mind created this entire world. I'm a huge fan of Karou's personality. I thought she was strong, badass and yet... maleable. She still has this innocence to her that makes her seem more multi-faceted than some other stock characters in YA lit these days. I, of course loved Akiva. I can just imagine him as sexy, brooding, mysterious angel. Yum. I also enjoyed Zuzanna, Karou's best friend. She was spunky and I like that. She had enough face time in the novel to make an impact and yet not enough to full form an entire opinion. I like that. Leaves me wanting more. I think the thing I loved most about this novel was the creativity and thought in the plot. I love this door to the other world idea and the whole teeth/resurrection idea. Lastly, the writing. Oh my god, the writing. It was superb. Laini Taylor is a master at the craft of writing. Her sentences were lovely without being overly poetic. I am a fan of the way she leaves some of her chapters off with that questionable last sentence. It sets up perfect tension for the next chapter. And of course the ending of the book totally left me wanting more and I can't wait for the second novel! The Bad: I don't have to0 many negative things to say about this novel. I wasn't too fond of the fact that Akiva and Karou (even though they have a rich, romantic history together) seemed to fall in love so suddenly. It did seem very insta-love to me which usually turns me off in YA books. I didn't have AS much of an issue in this book as others, because there was that whole other life story line. That is just a minor thing though. Overall, I really fell in love with this book. I find myself trying to figure out the correct way to describe it to someone and I can't. I just tell them they have to read it and find out for themselves. It's that good. I give it an A!

The story, the mystery, the romance, the unforgettable characters and Laini Taylor's imaginative world creation are all brilliant. But for me, the star is her writing. Many times, I stopped to let the beauty of a sentence soak in. Sublime.

A beautifully crafted mystery full of fantasy and romance. Everything comes together in the end to reveal a shocking revelation. What a unique and gorgeous world that Taylor has created!

Llegó en perfectas condiciones y es uno de mis libro favoritos.

I was not expecting a lot from this book. But oh-my, this book was fantastic. I am surprised, I loved this book so much. Great world building. Cool characters. Fascinating relationships. A badass heroine. This story is highly original. I recommend this to everyone who is into Fantasy genre and YA literature. If you like to read about books where places are described beautifully, you will like this book. The author described Prague so beautifully. I fell in love with the place. Well written and thoroughly engaging.

Bundan once: 1. Song of Ice and Fire (G. R.R. Martin) 2. Mistborn (Brandon Sanderson) 3. The Riftwar Saga (The Riftwar Safa) seri kitaplari okudum. Bu okuduklarimi cok begendim. Ama bu kitaptan bir turlu tatmin olamadim.