Review: Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Published: 2011, Little, Brown & Company

Series: Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Source: Library book
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Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic.

I do not think it's possible for me to write a review that truly does justice to this absolutely stunning book, but I will try. It's so vague and abstract and utterly wonderful that it's one of those books you just need to read to understand. But for the few who for some reason haven't taken the initiative to read this yet, perhaps I can convince you. 
 

Karou has always been an enigma. Her body is covered with tattoos, her hair grows blue, and she always carries around a sketchbook full of fantastical beings she refers to on a familiar basis. She also happens to be a talented artist attending art school in Prague. She allows no one to truly get close to her, not by choice but by need. For Karou's sketchbook is not full of fantasy stories but of her real-life experiences. She was raised by chimaera, part-human part-beast creatures. Although she visits them frequently and assists her father-figure Brimstone in his business of creating wishes by collecting teeth, Karou is not truly one of her foster family and therefore has her feet in two worlds. She wishes to know more about Brimstone and his business but is kept at arm's length. She's kept away, that is, until the centuries-old war between the chimaera and angels envelops her into the conflict. The world of chimaera and angels is unlike anything Karou could have imagined, magical and so very tragic. 

How did such ideas come out of Laini Taylor's head? Seriously, I need to know. I want to be able to get ideas like this and have the sort of storytelling talent she has. First of all, Taylor's worldbuilding is phenomenal. The majority of the story takes place in Prague. I've never been there, but from things I've heard and the book's description itself, it is a city that does seem to hover on the borders of modernity and medieval/renaissance times. The descriptions of Prague are magical and would have been enough to satisfy me, but Karou travels many places throughout the Earth. And then Taylor creates this entire alternate universe where the chimaera and angels live. It is all so vividly described and even though almost everything about the book is so radically fantastical, I found myself just going with it all and accepting the worlds just as Taylor has created them.

It must be said that Taylor's writing style is wonderfully poetic and descriptive. It added the right amount of magic to the story. I will admit that I'm incredibly biased in how I think writing styles in fantasies should be constructed, and Taylor's writing is everything I ever want in a fantasy novel. It's third-person past tense, visually oriented, and just so very clever. Even though there are so many aspects of the storytelling itself that I loved, it's always a good thing when I notice how well-written the story is.

Despite how closed off and wary she is of others, I found Karou to be a wonderful protagonist. So many things differentiate her from a typical teenage girl protagonist, but they all work in her favor. Although she is frustrated by her inability to understand all aspects of her life, Karou doesn't let those frustrations overwhelm her. She is intelligent, empathetic, respectful, and rational. She exhibits a maturity much greater than her years. She carries with her, however, this sense of incompleteness, a knowledge that there is so much she doesn't understand about her life and about her chimaera family. And what makes Karou truly worthy of her label as a strong female heroine is her overwhelming determination: to find out about herself, to protect her family, to make sense of her world.

I don't want to go into any details here since it would be a major spoiler, but I loved the flashback section. Although the flashback section is a significant chunk of the book and doesn't include our protagonist Karou, it's still instrumentally important in piecing other aspects of the story together. I loved how it was able to give me a better understanding of Akiva and a better look at the consequences of the war between the angels and chimaera. And the romance presented in this section is a star-crossed romance like no other. Both the male and female have distinct personalities and truly epitomize the idea of using a relationship to build each other up while not allowing the relationship to become the defining characteristic of either character.

My one (very tiny) complaint would be the use of multiple points of view. I am always super critical of when authors use this, as I almost never think that it's necessary, especially if we as readers are getting two perspectives of the exact same events. This did happen a few times in Daughter of Smoke & Bone. Although Karou is definitely the protagonist and the novel is told mainly third person limited from her perspective, there are select scenes recounted from Akiva's perspective. And there are even some parts where Taylor further distances the reader and offers a more omniscient perspective of the events. I understand that she wants her readers to grasp the magnitude of some events and see how it affects others. I firmly believe, however, that there are ways to have the same messages derived while only relying on Karou's perspective. The few chapters from Akiva's point of view did help me better understand him initially, but after reading the major flashback section later on in the book, I realized that Akiva undergoes enough character-building there that his earlier POV chapters become unnecessary. Regardless of my qualms with this narrative choice, the pros of this book far outweigh the cons.

What ultimately made Daughter of Smoke & Bone such a powerful read was that Laini Taylor has this ability to take things that could easily become cliches and turn them instead into something incredibly unique. Orphan girl with a mysterious past? War between angels and demons (or chimaera in this case)? Star-crossed lovers? All done before. But the way that these elements all come together is perfectly executed and so very different from anything I've ever read before.