Book Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor (Wonderment Edition)

Daughter of Smoke and Bone
by Laini Taylor (website, twitter)
Publication: September 27th 2011 by Little, Brown & Company
copy received from publisher at BEA
pre-order amazon (Kindle, Hardcover) synopsis 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 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?

This story is unique, it is full of wonderful imagination and characters that are wonderfully awesome and so very different! This is a story of hope, and war and good and evil and how what you seem to know about evil might be wrong and what you believed is good might be wrong too. It is a story about what true love can do, what true love can change – the power of love is indeed very powerful.

Karou (and please, how wonderful is this name? I would name my daughter Karou if I would ever have one!!!) had a very special upbringing. Now, she lives in Praque and attends an artist school. Her drawings are wonderful and very imaginative, full of what you would call a monster. But, those monsters have names and for Karou… they are not monsters at all!

Karou has blue hair she speaks 11 (?) languages without any accent… But, she hasn’t learned any of them, she simply “wished” them and then she could speak and understand them. She can fight and she travels all over the world simply by stepping out of a door. A door that leads her to the monsters she draws, the monsters that raised her, a door that leads to another world entirely.

But then, strange things happens, black handprints appear on doors around the world and otherworldly winged creatures appear that are beautiful beyond words.

One of them is drawn to Karou and he begins to wonder who is that girl? Akiva starts to follow her and then Karou’s world is tunred upside down, even more than it already is – and there is no turning back…

Karou and Akiva are so wonderful that you can’t help but love them, deeply. They seem lost among her own kind and among her family and there is something that haunts them. They are heartbreakingly lonely. Karou is strong but longes for love, she lives on her own in the human world and only comes back to run errants for her “monsters”. She seems so very lost and searching for love. Akiva is not very much different, yet he has different motivations. First he wants to kill Karou but then he feels so drawn to that strange girl and he wants to know more.

One questions remains… : Who is Karou? Will the truth destroy or rescue them?

One thing found extremely wonderful, each bigger Chapter starts with “Once Upon a Time”. I have picked one example for you:

“Once upon a time, an angel lay dying in the mist. -
And a devil knelt over him and smiled”

Mrs Taylor has definitely a way with words and her story telling is beautiful and mesmerizing! I love her writing and I love the story she tells me and I believe what she’s telling me…

Now, of course I’m desperate – I want more, I want to get lost in this story some more. I need and I want answers. I want my heart be put together, but.. I have to wait!