Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1)

by Laini Taylor

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.

Reviewed by paperbackjedi on

5 of 5 stars

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I re-read this after a few years and it holds up as one of my favorite YA fantasy books. I love the way Taylor incorporates old mythologies with truly unique expansions and twists on them, creating something new entirely that still feels a bit familiar. It's high concept and has some wildly original world building. It creates a world that is capricious with kindness and cruelty, hope and despair. I particularly enjoy the prose and the way it winds like smoke around the pages and into your head as if you're recalling a melody you've heard, but can't remember the lyrics to. It's haunting and devastating and beautiful and the words seem to ache and pull and sway. I just... really love the story itself and how the story is written and the characters are so human and flawed and their growth is measured realistically in both steps forward and steps backward.

If you're looking for something lyrical, strange, and just a bit epic, this is a good pick. It's a very different sort of play on angels and demons and where humanity falls in between them and how we are all capable of different shades of those beasts.

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  • 7 January, 2012: Reviewed