Book Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Review by Noha Badawi

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Author: Laini Taylor

Genre: Urban Fantasy / Young-adult

Published September 27^th, 2011 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Rating: 5/5 stars.

“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.”

Has it ever crossed your mind that there might be a parallel universe to ours? One where angels and demons exist, where magic was once the core of their existence? Where power and hunger for control turned the most delicate souls into monsters? Turned angels into hunters, killer soldiers? Turned monsters into the slaves, the oppressed people?

In the “Daughter of Smoke and Bone” series, Laini Taylor, brought this theory to life. It only proves that all these questions have in fact crossed her genius mind; and oh sweet lord did she do an amazing job with that.

Raised half in our world, half in “Elsewhere”, Karou – our main protagonist – has managed to keep her double lives in balance. In our world, she’s a seventeen year old art student in Prague. In Elsewhere, she’s the human girl who runs errands to a monstrous creature, the closest thing she has to family. Twice per week, she receives a note from Brimstone – the man/chimera who raised her – that says: “Errand requiring immediate attention.” Karou always goes whenever he calls, even though he never says Please.

Brimstone’s dark work, buying all kind of teeth from hunters and murderers, she never understood the reason behind it, nor who she is or how she came into his keeping. Her past is a mystery and her questions were always dismissed whenever they came up. In every corner around the world, there are doors that lead to Elsewhere; these doors are now being branded and shut – by Seraphim, the highest ranks of angels, trapping her on the other side of the only family she knows.

Reading this book was like being thrown right into the middle of a piece of art, a master piece of colors, textures and life, magic; it was utterly stunning. Laini Taylor’s writing is extremely poetic, rich, divine and extraordinarily bizarre; her words are the kind that doesn’t take too long to reach the deepest place into your soul. The world she spilled onto those 420 pages was so mind blowing; it took me to an entirely different place in my mind and I found myself soaring happily between the lines.

She used weird, mythical names for her characters, brought to life myths long forgotten and took me to a new place in the world that I never thought I wanted to visit one day; now I do.

“The streets of Prague were a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century—or the twentieth or nineteenth, for that matter. It was a city of alchemists and dreamers, its medieval cobbles once trod by golems, mystics, invading armies. Tall houses glowed goldenrod and carmine and eggshell blue, embellished with Rococo plasterwork and capped in roofs of uniform red. Baroque cupolas were the soft green of antique copper, and Gothic steeples stood ready to impale fallen angels. The wind carried the memory of magic, revolution, violins, and the cobbled lanes meandered like creeks. Thugs wore Motzart wigs and pushed chamber music on street corners, and marionettes hung in windows, making the whole city seem like a theater with unseen puppeteers crouched behind velvet.”

How beautiful is that? I mean, that’s just magical.

From the first page, I immediately loved Karou with her blue hair, confident, artistic, spunky and completely out of the ordinary character. The way she looked at the worlds she lives in through her art and how she put her heart into everything she does, Karou has definitely become one of my absolute favorite female protagonists.

Akiva, this man just skyrocketed to the top of my favorite-male-characters list in just a few pages. Badass, strong, drop-dead-gorgeous, from the first time he showed up, my heart went out to him, for I saw how a tortured soul he is; turning himself into a brutal, soulless monster, hiding his true self behind the mask of vengeance. I could feel how empty and haunted his tiger eyes were and it was like a pang to my heart. I kept asking myself the same question Karou asked herself: “What could’ve possibly happened to this beautiful creature to rip his soul out of him like that?” And oh boy when I found out, it was one of those moments where I needed to just curl on myself and weep. Weep for this ethereal being, tortured man, broken and in pain of grief and broken-heart.

Brimstone, I loved that man; I really did. He’s the kind that makes you feel safe, loved while throwing you right in the middle of a fight – danger; if that makes any sense.

Zusana, this girl was a fierce soul; never taking no for an answer and never standing down from a fight. I loved how she reacted to Karou telling her the truth about her worlds, how she totally accepted it and acted on it like it was the normal thing for the past years. Getting to know Zusana was one of the best things about this book, because this girl is strong and unyielding, not easily bent and downright stubborn. However when Mr. Mik shows up, she turns into a fairy-tale princess, putting her man through tasks, always testing him to see if he’s worthy. And believe me he is.

Laini Taylor’s story was like violin music, filled with raw emotions, ones that flow out of the pages right into your heart. I loved how she didn’t just write the story about love, but it was about hope as well. Hope for a better world, a better future; one where every kind of being gets to live peacefully. The myths she created for every world, the quotes she put on every chapters separated, each told an entirely different magical story and I just loved drowning in them.