Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Review:

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1

Author: Laini Taylor

Publishing: June 5th, 2012 by Little Brown

Format: Hardcover

Source: Gift {From a Friend}

Genre: YA; Fantasy; Romance; Paranormal

Blurb:

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?

Thoughts:

This book was my November Epic Rec from Nikki, so I didn’t exactly have a choice about reading it.  However, I already owned a copy that a friend have given me, and I recently got it signed at Yallfest.  Laini Taylor was so sweet and I’m really glad that I got to meet her.

So anyways, I actually had a lot of trouble getting into the book.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t connecting per say, more that I kept getting distracted by other things.  I did, however, eventually sit down and start from the beginning, and after that I couldn’t stop.  After I got past the first chunk of the book Karou’s story speeds up a bit and then the plot became more exciting.  The flashback/storytelling bits were by far my favorite part because not only did they clear up questions from the beginning of the book they showed the character development that I’d been craving. In retrospect, although the first part of the book was slower, it was a necessary slow that introduced Karou and other characters and allowed the world to be built.  I think that Taylor’s time spent in the beginning allowed me to warm up to Karou as a protagonist, because even though she’s not ‘dislikable’ per say, she’s not the cookie cutter hero and took some getting used to.

Taylor’s complicated fantasy complex is absolutely fascinating.  I have no idea where she came up with the mixed animal people but it has this unique urban vibe that sets The Daughter of Smoke and Bone apart from other popular YA fantasy.  Taylor’s secondary characters also played larger roles, had depth, and big personalties (and by big I don’t mean loud, I mean details were added to elaborate on them).

The end was not at all a cliffhanger.  Although it was obvious that this book was going to be part of a saga, (it is now known to be a trilogy) I still feel confident that this book can stand on its own.  The end wraps up the main plot for this book, while still living enough room to explore in new directions, which I’m sure are exploited in the following books.

In Retrospect:

This is a fresh fantasy book that breaks away from the YA norm in terms of content and strength of character.  Fans of action packed dystopians who need a break from the apocalypses might want to give this a try, along with any traditional fantasy lovers hoping for a different read.  Mystery and romance fans will find this book appealing as well.  I advise readers to suck it up through the set up and wait for the juicy part, because when you get there, man its good.