Review: Daughter Of Smoke And Bone by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Synopsis from Goodreads:
Featuring necklaces made of wishes; an underground shop dealing in teeth; magical tattoos; a wishbone on a cord, DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE is a thrilling story about Karou and her secret life as an apprentice to a wishmonger. Karou manages to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she is a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to an inhuman creature who deals in wishes and is the closest thing she has to family. Her life is surrounded by mysteries she is desperate to unveil.

 

WOW! - that pretty much sums up this book. Daughter of Smoke and Bone becomes the standard to which novels now need to measure up to. I think the pages actually glow with magic as you read it. This novel is just beautiful- so fresh and quirky and completely different from anything else I've ever read. Mysterious and intriguing, and completely engrossing.


Karou is an art student living in Prague, and flitting between two worlds- the real world with her artwork and her normal friends, and then the world of the demons who have raised her since she was a baby. Karou is a wonderfully unique character, both feisty and kick-ass, but also recently heartbroken and incredibly emotionally vulnerable. You can't help but love her and be completely fascinated by her. She is working for her grumpy guardian Brimstone, travelling the world via portal and collecting teeth from grave robbers or animal researchers for Brimstone's mysterious magic, when she meets Akiva and finds herself caught up in a centuries old otherworldly war. Secrets come out that explain who Karou really is, and we look back in time, to Akiva's past, and an incident that changed the course of the future. I loved the way that the flashbacks into the past tied cleverly into the dramatic events of the present- very cleverly bringing the story back full circle.


I don't know how to describe this book without giving too much away, only that it's magical, and it made me laugh and made me cry- a superb book full of humour, love, loss, war, revelations, tragedy and heartbreak. So so good. It is the beautiful vivid and lyrical writing, and the tragic romance that really make this book what it is, and I was so completely wrapped up this world, I was there. This is my favourite book of the year so far, I'm desperate for more from this story and these characters.


Expected publication of book 2 is September 2012



Don't just take my word for it! Check out these awesome reviews from these fab bloggers-

Lesley at My Keeper Shelf
Christy at The Reader Bee
Jessica at Jess Hearts Books
Giselle at Xpresso Reads
Kirsty at The Overflowing Library


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“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love... It did not end well.”