Author: Laini Taylor
Classification: YA Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal
Source: Bought from Amazon
Overall Grade:
A+
I thought...
This is what great writing looks like.
__________________________________________________________________
Summary (from Goodreads):
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?__________________________________________________________________
My Thoughts:
Magic. Hope. The endless battle of good versus evil. A star-crossed love. A devastating secret.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone is an incredible novel. It manages to attack so many classic tropes with ingenuity. Powerful writing (in a 3rd person narrative that is so refreshing) brings its own magic to a story filled with ancient lore, hidden worlds, and creatures that challenge traditional notions of what it means to be human.
Karou is a girl with aquamarine hair whose only known family is a group of grotesque demons who trade human teeth for wishes. She is independent, smart, creative. But she is missing something. She aches for something unknowable, unidentified.
She is lonely.
Karou's journey to rid herself of acute loneliness is intense and the tension is palpable. In many YA novels, the author's desire to withhold a secret from the reader until a pivotal moment in the story is usually annoying and almost never done correctly.
However, Daughter of Smoke and Bone shows that to a talented author like Taylor, no trope or cliché is off-limits. In many ways, reading this novel is to experience the magic of magic and the thrill of other worlds and the truth of a great protagonist for the first time. In this way, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is not only an advocate of societal equality, strength of character, and inner beauty (among other things), but also of the magic and power of storytelling.
Readers with a critical eye and a low-tolerance for poor or lazy writing will be thrilled to find a smart, atmospheric YA series in Daughter of Smoke and Bone! However, readers who are more interested in a palpable, emotional romance and a thrilling story will also be satisfied with Karou's tale!
__________________________________________________________________
Overall Grade:
A+
I thought...
This is what great writing looks like.
Tweet
(Full Disclosure: Any books purchased from Amazon through the links on this page will result in a small commission to me.)
Great review! Really looking forward to reading this.
ReplyDeleteYes! So good. And I really like your review,. I just reviewed this too: http://diamondsinthelibrary.blogspot.com/2012/11/daughter-of-smoke-and-bone-by-laini.html
ReplyDeleteThis is a fabulous blog. The red-headed heroines of YA do tend to be amazing. I hope Alanna the Lioness is in here somewhere, I haven't looked at your index yet :)
I found you through your Goodreads review of Fire by Kristin Cashore, which we both also loved (I'm getting ready to review it on my blog). Such a great one.