Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Angels
Hodder & Stoughton
2011
Audiobook/Hardcover
418
"Errand requiring immediate attention. Come.
The note was on vellum, pierced by the talons of the almost-crow that delivered it. Karou read the message. 'He never says please', she sighed, but she gathered up her things.
When Brimstone called, she always came."
In general, Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she's a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to family. Raised half in our world, half in 'Elsewhere', she has never understood Brimstone's dark work - buying teeth from hunters and murderers - nor how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself, plagued by the sensation that she isn't whole.
Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing, and Karou must choose between the safety of her human life and the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.
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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