Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Author: Laini Taylor

Release Date: September 27^th, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 420

Source: finished copy from Publisher

Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1

Summary (goodreads.com): 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 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?

My Review:

[insert a ridiculous amount of exclamation points and then add twenty more here]

I LOVE DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE SO MUCH!!! I love everything about it (except the ending which practically killed me when I read it). Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a beautiful novel (which is high praise considering I rarely ever used that word to describe anything). The beginning intrigued me. I was so interested in this girl with blue hair who went to art school in Prague and ran strange errands for devils. I loved her relationship with the chimera, Brimstone especially (who is my favorite character). I loved the idea of wishes coming true and doors that opened to anywhere in the world. But when the doors to Elsewhere burned the story takes a turn, it lapses into what can honestly only be called beautiful. The angel/devil relationship described within the pages of this novel is so touching, so heart-wrenchingly beautiful that I just sat there reading with tears in my eyes. But that ending! I wanted to− but no; I can’t tell you, let’s just say that I was a very angry chimera lover. This is one of those books whose characters will remain in my heart forever. I will always be able to picture Karou drawing Brimstone in his shop as he counts out teeth, that image (and many more) will be burned into my brain forevermore and I am a better, more magical person for it.