Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Author: Laini Taylor

Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1

Publisher: Little Brown Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: June 5^th, 2012

Format: purchased paperback

Pages: 418

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself.

I read Daughter of Smoke and Bone as part of the read-a-long hosted by Bookish Book Blog and I am so glad that I did! 

The premise of this story is really a story within a story. Karou doesn't know where she came from. Her family is not from our world but she doesn’t know anything of the world they come from. Karou was raised in a world of magic and secrets which has forced her to be isolated from the world she lives in with her "different" family. Not only does she have to keep her adoptive family a secret but they have secrets they are unwilling the share with her. When a series of events threatens to separate her from her family and their secretive world forever. Karou will do whatever it takes the get the only family she has ever known back even if it means remaking all their rules. 

The world the Laini Taylor creates in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone is just amazing and gorgeously vivid. She literally takes you around the world and beyond. Reading this books makes me want to go be friends with Laini Taylor, if she can come up with this elaborate and imaginative world, I bet she tells awesome stories and would just super entertaining to be around!

The characters are equally as vivid and original! Even though every character has their secrets that only makes them more intriguing. Karou is a beautiful protagonist! She's strong, loyal, and true. She loves her adoptive family and the one friend she's made. Even though she doesn't totally understand her family’s world, she loves and accepts them for how they have taken care of her in their own strange way. 

There really is not good way to describe this story without giving everything away. It’s something you just have to experience for yourself. If you are anything like me you will be completely drawn into the fanciful world Laini Taylor creates in Daughter of Smoke and Bone!  I cannot wait to read the next book, Days of Blood and Starlight!

If you like you read stories that take you to an extremely imaginative new world. Full of eccentric characters, you devour Daughter of Smoke and Bone!

Hi!

I'm Laini Taylor.

I am a writer-artist-daydreamer-nerd-person,

and simultaneously a mom-wife-sister-daughter-person.

I can do a lot of things at once, like for example: I can sleep and dream and also lie very still,

all while also breathing and ever-so-slowly growing ten distinct toenails.

* * *

I write books for youngish people, 

but they can also be read and enjoyed by oldish people, aka grown-ups.

You know grown-ups? They tend to be a little bigger and hairier than kids.

But not always.

* * *

I live in Portland, Oregon, USA

with my husband Jim Di Bartolo, who is an amazing illustrator and who I'm

always begging to draw me things,

and with our wee droll genius, Clementine Pie, age three.

* * *

Some of my favorite things are books and bookstores

and breakfast food and mangoes and chocolate,

and cake stands and table cloths and old houses,

and going places (like libraries and other countries),

and dreaming up stories,

and making stuff (like cupcakes or peculiar dolls),

and playing with Jim and Clementine,

and taking pictures,

and falling asleep (so cozy)

and waking up (exciting!).