Review: Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

To her best friend at school, Karou is just a regular girl with blue hair, fills her sketchbook with amazingly imaginative drawings and often disappears on mysterious errands with no notice. What Zuzana doesn’t realize is just how different Karou’s life really is. When Karou is sent to Marrakesh on one of her errands, she finds herself in the middle of some commotion that breaks out and comes face to face with Akiva, a stranger with a fiery intense stare. The chaos in the market is part of a larger war among worlds that is about to begin, and Karou finds herself caught up in the middle of this battle and slowly realizing that her closest ally is also one she has been brought up not to trust.

What a beautifully written book. Taylor’s style is so poetic and descriptive, elegant and eloquent. The depictions of all the characters and the setting of Prague makes you feel like you were walking the streets with Karou. However, it might have been too descriptively written for me – so much so that it distracted me from focusing on the story itself. I felt myself lost in all the beautiful language and imagery to really follow the plot at times.

A story about angels & demons, Daughter of Smoke & Bone has a nice twist, allowing those lines to be blurred of who or what is considered good or evil. The story has a very old-world feel to it and I often found that it was actually set in an older time until mentions of technology brings me back to the present day. Approximately the last 1/4 of the book feels like a completely different novel. Understandably, this portion is to tie up and explain a lot of what was going on but it felt so disconnected from the rest of the book that you almost forget what had happened before.

That being said, I do acknowledge and appreciate the imaginative story and wonderful narrative that Taylor has created. Of all the beautiful things written in these pages, one particular quote stood out to me. It is such a profound line that really made me stop & reflect on the truth of that for so many people.

“You really think joy is easier to come by than pain? What have you had more of?”

For me, this book was a 3-star up until the latter part of the book where things were coming together, bumping it up half a mark. I like a good, interesting reveal.