Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy
Author: Laini Taylor
# of Books: 3 (Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Days of Blood and Starlight, Dreams of Gods and Monsters)
There is a novella listed as Book 2.5 called Night of Cake and Puppets
Book Order: Chronological
Complete?: Yes
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance, Angels, Urban Fantasy, Demons
Heat Rating: cool
Point of View: Third Person, Alternating
Thoughts:
PLEASE NOTE: That as of the publication of this review, I have only read the first book in the series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Find out why I haven’t read the next two below…
I’ve wanted to read this series ever since I saw the cover for Daughter of Smoke and Bone when it was first published. It has been at the top of my to-read list ever since and I’ve been anxiously waiting for the eBooks to become available at my library.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone starts off slow but intriguing. It really starts to build up as you continue reading and you get a little hooked into the story’s mystery. It isn’t overly exciting in the sense that there is a lot of action or fighting but it is exciting in the sense that as you learn more about Karou, the faster the plot seems to go.
While the writing is well done, I find because it is told in third person I sometimes have a hard time following what is going on. This isn’t a book you read when you are a little sleepy because you will probably miss something important. One thing I didn’t like about the writing was the flow of the story. One chapter would be in the present but the next would be in the past and sometimes I would get a little lost trying to piece together the timeline. By the end of the book, I was into the story but nothing really wowed me about the book. It wasn’t really what I thought it was going to be as I found it to be slower than expected.
The end of Daughter of Smoke and Bone promises that the sequel will be a bit faster plot-wise but the mere size of the book is daunting. Most books are approximately 250 pages as an epub file for my Kobo and I can read that in 5 hours. Daughter of Smoke and Bone was in the 300s which is only an hour or so more. But Days of Blood and Starlight was over 400 pages and Gods and Monsters was even longer. Not that I have an issue with longer books–sometimes I prefer them–but the problem was I had multiple books out from the library (never fails that all your holds become available at the same time) and not a whole lot of time that I had to make the executive decision to return the last 2 books in the series and try again later.
That was 5 months ago and I haven’t thought about this series since. I would like to finish the series because I do find it interesting but with the hectic life I lead, I probably won’t be able to even contemplate finishing this series until Christmas break.
Conclusion:
A unique series for sure but one that moves slower than most. If you don’t like really long books, avoid! But if you like books that focus on demons and the paranormal/supernatural elements associated with them, this is a good one for you to pick up.
Rating: 4/5
Similar Reads: The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman
Synopsis for Daughter of Smoke and Bone (from Goodreads):
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 otherwordly 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 beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery 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?
