Book Review: Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Title: Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Series: Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1

Author: Laini Taylor

Publication Date: September 27, 2011

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

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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:

Wow. This book was a great and I can’t believe it took me a year to finally read it. So last week, I finally got my copy and it didn’t disappoint.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone got a unique concept and plot. It’s actually refreshing from paranormal books in genre that I’ve read. I got intrigued about this whole ‘teeth’ thing. And then we have Karou, the main female character who happens to be somehow “special & unique”. At first, it made me think how eminent her imagination is. Since she’s an artist and she draws these certain creatures and she actually has a storyline about them every day which she shared to her best friend.

But then, there’s this forbidden romance (which is kind of an exception on what I said about being unique since I’ve read a ton of YA regarding that situation). The revelation during the last few chapters got me confused for a bit. I had to reread to understand how this/that happened. The chapters (events) tend to change from Karou’s situation to another characters, from present to past to back again.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book. Worth getting a second read (and more).


My Rating: