By Laini Taylor
amazon.com - Hardback $11.20
Book Description (taken 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 Review
**********Off the Charts Mindblowingly Awesome
There are some stories that are truly special; the kind of stories that bury their way inside, claw at the chest and tug at the gut. They make you forget the world around you and for a while you disappear into another place, another time, another life.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a very special novel.
Karou drew me in from the first glitter of her thoughts. She’s an incredibly enigmatic, funny, young, wise, vulnerable, strong, beautiful paradox of a heroine and I utterly love her. Karou’s world is unlike anywhere I’ve ever been before, from the gothic, creative and atmospheric streets of Prague to the warm, bizarre and frighteningly wonderful shop of horrors where her family of Chimaera stay. Each character, from the human Zuzanna and Kaz, to the brisk, compelling Brimstone, and the darkly stunning Akiva, is exquisitely drawn. Taylor’s realm of the fantastical is brought to life through the well-rounded characterization, and indeed her untouchable imagination. I could lavish praise upon praise on Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and write screeds and screeds about her gorgeous prose, EPIC and truly unique tale of war, the lush and heartbreaking romance that could give fiction’s greatest love stories a run for their money, and about how every time I sat down to crack open the pages I knew my breath would be kidnapped a time or two and knew a feeling of complete contentedness awaited me.
But I won’t.
Instead I highly recommend you find out for yourself just how extraordinary Laini Taylor’s world is.
I’m in love with Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Really and truly in love.
One of my favourite reads EVER, never mind of 2011.
Ten Explosive Stars!
Sam x
Wow that's a lot of stars! I wasn't quite as struck as you although I did really enjoy it. I just got a bit thrown off when the story changed from Karou to M... oh my word I can't remember her name already!
ReplyDeleteOh I just fell in love with it so much, Karen. And I actually loved the change at the end (Madrigal), thought it was so epic. Some books just really get to me and this one did. I know a lot of people enjoyed it, but not as much as I adore it. Such is fiction. :-)
ReplyDelete