Happy New Year! And what better way to ring in 2012 than with a bunch of reading recommendations! My critique partner, Kelly Hayes, and I were at a party together last month. Fun times! And we were talking about books. No surprise there. :) Anyway, Kelly was RAVING about the book she'd just finished reading and offered to review it for us. And here it is!
DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE by Laini Taylor
Karou is not your average teen. Really. First of all, at the age of seventeen, she has her own flat in Prague, speaks many different languages, has blue hair, and goes to art college where she fills dozens of sketch books with monsters and fantastical beings. But those are the ordinary things in her everyday world. What really sets Karou apart is her other life, the one even her best friend doesn’t know about.
The only family she’s ever known is a group of beings from a parallel word. Her father figure is a monster named Brimstone, part ram, part lion, part human, who deals in teeth of all kinds from all over the world. Karou has been running errands for him for years, some of them extremely dangerous, but she still doesn’t know what he does with all those teeth.
She also knows nothing about her own origins. It’s all very mysterious and will keep you guessing for at least the first half of the book, while the artfully rendered backdrop of Prague adds a nice gothic feel.
Karou’s life takes a dire turn when black handprints appear on doors around the world, portals for dimension-hopping traders, one of which is the door to Brimstone’s shop. These portals are being sealed by a team of warrior angels. Suddenly Karou is cut off from her Chimera family. But, being the kick-ass heroine that she is, she’s not going to take this lying down. She fights an angel named Akiva, barely escaping with her life. Then he comes looking for her and all hell breaks loose.
What follows is a complex tale of war, forbidden love, identity, magic and mythology. And the way Laini Taylor weaves all these elements together is its own form of magic. Her blending of past and present, romance and violence, reality and fantasy is seamless. Her humor is of the darker variety and at times laugh-out-loud funny. And her prose is lyrical and surprising.
By all rights I should have disliked this book. Angels don’t impress me. I avoid most fantasy like a bad virus. And a three-part series can seem more like an endurance test than a pleasurable reading experience. Not only did none of this bother me, but I got sucked into this story like I had walked through a portal into a world I didn’t want to leave. Bring on that second book!
Thank you, Kelly! I love your reviews.
Please click through to the reviews below. It's a great way to start the year!
MIDDLE GRADE/YOUNG ADULT BOOK REVIEWSStacy Nyikos: THE WAR HORSE by Michael Morpurgo (middle grade)