Review: Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Wow, this ended up being actually different. It started out with a girl walking to school being harassed by a beautiful boy she broke up with earlier, and I thought, oh no, here we go. But then it went off and became something entirely its own. It didn't stay at school for long, thank goodness, and the romance situation was not what you might expect with that beginning.

Instead, we get a world full of intriguing mythology, dark magic, an endless, hateful war between angels and chimaera, and a romance of a completely different sort. By the halfway mark, I didn't feel like I was reading YA at all, but like I was in a different universe.

The narrative is a bit disjointed at one point, like two stories were stitched together. When Karou finally discovers who she is and what it's all about, the story takes a huge detour, showing it all at once. It's not an info dump, but it's a completely different story line right in the middle of everything.

This is the point where the book gets really good, but it took me a while to adjust to it. Everything I thought I knew gets turned on its head, and this is where I came to care about what was happening to the entire world, both sides of the conflict, and all of the characters I met at the beginning. This is where things started to matter, and it really grabbed me.

Then how it ended - heartbreaking! I'm glad the next book is already out so I can find out what happens after that cliffhanger. I feel as if it's only just begun.



View all my reviews