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Bloody Bookaholic's Commandment:

Thou Shall Read Till Thy Eyes Bleed

Wednesday 22 October 2014

Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor


Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Author: Laini Taylor
Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Book #: 1
Pages: 417
Reading Level: YA
Book Rating: Photobucket.7
Goodreads Rating: 4.12
Published: Sept. 27th, 2011

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 grows 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?
Taschima's POV:

When I first started Daughter of Smoke and Bone I was a little skeptic. I mean how good could this book actually be? I went to Goodreads and saw that almost every single of my friends gave it a 4 and 5 star rating, good review after good review, on the goodreads front page I think I only saw 1 bad review only. I was intrigued. Would it live up to the hype? Would I love it as others seemed to?
The answer is yes yes yes.
The story itself is intriguing and different. The world of the angels and demons, and their relationship is so original. Angels are normally always portrayed as being the good guys, the righteous ones, but the author is pretty sneaky. You as a reader are attached to the demons from the very beginning of the story. Learning about how they took care of this small child, Karou, and raised her. I like how you get to see the story from the demon's side. On the other hand the Angels are only "Angels" when it comes to the name; they are scary little buggers. I really enjoy how she turned the tables on us and made us think outside the box. The eternal battle between good and evil was never written so good; There is such a thing as a bad angel guys, and a good demon! Who knew?!
I think you could easily divide the book into two parts. Part one is all about the action, the suspense, the mystery of this other world and the teeth and the dealings of Kaurou's boss, and for that matter of Karou herself. She is a mystery. Who are her parents? Why was she raised by demons? How does she have blue hair?! At the beginning I thought Karou was depicted a bit too perfect and I thought I wasn't going to be able to connect with her because she didn't seem to have any flaws, but I did grow to like her and to feel for her when her world turns to shit. SO the first half of the story is all about the world building.
The second half is all about the lurve. BUT the love and the relationship in the story has a fantastic point! It is necessary and I wouldn't have changed it at all. It was a nice change, and it added to the story (plus it answered a lot of questions- true some I had figured out already, but it was nice to see the whole picture). The concept of forbidden love has never been handled with such delicacy and grace. However, Akiva, the male lurve, was another character I didn't like at first, and I didn't think I would ever be able to care about this stone cold beautiful creature. But as we get to see how he became the person he is, it all makes sense and I started to like him, a bit. But I still think he acted like a little pansy. These characters are very complicated, and they fuck up royally at times, but that is what makes me like them! They aren't the rule, they are the exception.
This book was very short for me, even though it was, what, 400 pages long? It goes by quick. I would recommend it to friends, bloggers, and fellow readers alike.


2 comments:

  1. I NEED to bump this up on my TBR list!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just finished enjoying this one also. You're right, a unique slant on the angel/demon thing.

    ReplyDelete

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