Title: Days of Blood and Starlight
Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Author: Laini Taylor
Genre: Angels
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Release Date: 2012
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 517

WrensReads Review:

So Laini has probably one of the best ways with words. It is like she is writing a ballad. And sometimes, I think that is why I can’t bring myself to rate this book five stars. I just get so distracted by the writing, that when I come back up for air I realize not a lot had happened.

Which is why I had to take off a star. Not a lot happened for the majority of the book. It was setting everything up for that huge, ginormous twist(s) at the end. Don’t get me wrong, I really like this series. The animal-part-human like chimaeras are really my favorite part of the book. The whole idea that the souls of these creatures can return to a vessel built from teeth is just a jaw-dropping creation. How did she come up with that?

I will probably have some spoilers from the previous book, so if you haven’t read the first book, I would wait to read the rest of my review. Unless you are insane like me and love spoilers to keep your anxiety in check. Which also means you are weird… welcome to my life.

So our beautiful blue-haired ladybug is living with the rest of the chimaeras… which also means she is living with the one person who wanted (and almost succeeded) to kill her: Thiago, the white wolf.

And since she was the only student of the previous resurrectionist, Brimstone, now she is the resurrectionist; which also means, that Akiva and the other angels know that someone else has the skills do resurrect and are not too happy about it.

Except, Akiva believes Karou is dead (yet again), and Karou can’t forgive him for what he did while she wasn’t aware of his past but she is also so drawn to him at the same time and everyone is really confused and and and —-

*deep breaths* anyway, Hazael and Liraz are fighting against the chimaera while Akiva has his own agenda and is just trying to keep more innocent living-beings for dying.

Then the best character in this whole series, Zuzana, and her boyfriend are worried sick about Karou and believe that Karou is leaving them bread crums to come and find and save her. They really don’t know what they are getting into since Thiago and his chimaera are in hiding and don’t particularly like humans… good thing they needed Karou, right?

But then you see the monster that Thiago is… and Akiva gets his heart broken in an unexpected way… and then my heart burst in an unputbacktogetherer type way that I legit cried at the end of this book.

Yes yes, I’m an emotional wreck the majority of my life, but I can’t even bring myself to read about these characters work through all the pain that happened.

I need the third book to end happily, but with a title with monsters and gods written in it, I’m not sure I am going to get my wish.

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Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Author: Laini Taylor
Genre: Angels
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Release Date: 2011
Format: Audiobook/Hardcover
Pages: 418

WrensReads Review:

Okay, I have a lot to say about this book.

First, let’s talk about the instalove, because yes kids… we have instaluhhhv.

I want to first say that if there is ever a case where instalove isn’t totally annoying, it would be this book’s case. I’m not going to go into the details of why it isn’t as annoying (because that would be called a spoiler and also a sin) but know that as someone who kind of rolls her eyes at anything mushy and gushy and over the top romantic, I only rolled my eyes, like, once. It ends up not being really instalove but you have to read until the end to get to that point where you go “ohhhhh, okay yeah. I can board that ship.”

Second, the writing / world building… which was out of this world.

I read Strange the Dreamer and loved how dreamy (lol) the writing was and how the words weaved together perfectly to form this huge, magical and imaginative world. I didn’t realize that it was just Laini Taylor’s writing. She builds the world piece by piece so you aren’t overwhelmed and it is easy for you to follow along. She strings you along with these beautiful sentences and leaves your imagination going wild with possibilities.

I mean, we have monsters and angels and girls with tattoos and sugar-dresses and blue hair and wishes for currency and literally just magical words.

Chimaera: Animal hybrids. These are human-like creatures that have parts of other animals that make them up. So you can have bat wings but you also have hooves for feet. This is amazing and where do I sign up?

Seraphim: Angels. Literally human-with-wings-and-super-strength-and-never-die angels.

And these two have been at war for centuries. They legit hate each other. And, without going into their history too much, I am totally and completely on the side of the Chimaera and wouldn’t mind seeing the Seraphim plunder to the earth for good.

I know, I know, I just basically hit you with a ton of information. Think of this story as a loose-retelling of Romeo and Juliet. We do a lot of flashbacks in this book, and in that flashback we have a pure-Chimaera girl named Madrigal and a Seraphim boy named Akiva. Under an unfortunate-yet-kind-of-fortunate situation, these two fall in love. And if you didn’t understand the underlining of this, that isn’t allowed in this century-long war.

So what does this have to do with our blue-haired, tattooed main squeeze Karou? Well, a lot.

But you’ll just have to dive head first into this beautiful weaved story to find out, now won’t you?

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