Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Author: Laini Taylor
Publication Date: 9/27/11
Publisher: Little Brown

Blurb(GR): 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?

Review:
Not just five stars…one million stars, two sister moons, and two pairs of wings in flight.  That’s how beautiful this book is.  I hope this is a huge hit, and all the kids read it.  Listen up kids, this book has everything that you’re looking for:  secrets, paranormal creatures, hot guys, best friends; passionate, enduring, forbidden, love…and angst!  But unlike all the rest, this one is the real thing.

It’s times like these that I wish I was a real, honest to goodness book fairy, with little wings, a wand, a tutu, and magical powers of course.  Kids can simply place whichever one of the mountains of published young adult paranormal romance novels that they’ve purchased in the past few years under their pillows, and I’ll replace them all with this book.  Sort of like the tooth fairy.  (And after reading this book, the question really begs to be asked:  what are you doing with all of those teeth, tooth fairy?  WHAT ARE THE TEETH FOR?!)

The beginning of this book is almost lulling in its routine and normalcy.  Karou is a young art student in Prague, attending classes, dealing with her obnoxious ex-boyfriend, and going out with her petite best friend Zuzana.  She’s a little eccentric, a little odd, but her classmates don’t ask too many questions, and Karou has perfected the art of the non-answer.  Her popular journals contain vivid drawings of another world, populated by mythical creatures: part human, part animal, each with detailed traits and peculiarities.  “Where do you get your ideas?” her classmates ask, and Karou responds with a trademark little smile and assures them that it’s not made up; it’s all true. 

Disquieting little details about Karou’s life are revealed almost casually, and the apprehension grows.  Soon the curiosity and apprehension build to outright anxiety and you just have to know.  But you don’t want to know.  Maybe you think that you’ve already figured out a few things, but "you can’t know until you know.”

Karou’s feelings: her indignation, her terrible curiosity, and her aching loneliness all come across so powerfully and vividly.  I think that I felt every single thing that she feels through these pages.  I felt immersed in Karou.   And just like Karou, so many details and hints became devastatingly clear to me only after it was too late. 

The world that Laini Taylor creates is intricate, bright, original, and it will stretch your imagination.  The characters are layered with concealed motivations, and they’re heartbreaking and real.  The love story is tragic and intense (and takes advantage of perhaps the only justifiable excuse for instalove).  And the writing!  Beautiful, emotional, lyrical, shattering…all those words don’t even begin to describe it.  This woman can write. 

But perhaps the most astonishing thing to me is this book’s complete dearth of cynicism.  This book is all about love, peace, and the magic of hope.  

”Hope can be a powerful force.  Maybe there’s no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.”

I can’t believe that it got through to me so much, but it really did.  I think that it will be difficult for even the most committed of cynics not to be affected by this book.

Perfect Musical Pairing
The Smashing Pumpkins – Muzzle

Okay, so I really like it when I can pair up a writer with a specific group.  It gives me a nice little feeling of symmetry.  The lyrics of this song apply so perfectly to this story, and when I listened to it I even got a bit emotional about the book so that’s always a good sign.

“All things will surely have to end,
and great loves will one day have to part.”

Blurb (GR): Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else. He knew he could not survive through strength; he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older. Then he was discovered by the recruiters for the Battle School.

For Earth was at war -- a terrible war with an inscrutable alien enemy. A war that humanity was near to losing. But the long distances of interstellar space has given hope to the defenders of Earth -- they had time to train military geniuses up from childhood, forging them into an irresistible force in the high-orbital facility called the Battle School. That story is told in two books, the beloved classic Ender's Game, and its parallel, Ender's Shadow.

Bean was the smallest student at the Battle School, but he became Ender Wiggins' right hand. Since then he has grown to be a power on Earth. He served the Hegemon as strategist and general in the terrible wars that followed Ender's defeat of the alien empire attacking Earth. Now he and his wife Petra yearn for a safe place to build a family -- something he has never known -- but there is nowhere on Earth that does not harbor his enemies -- old enemies from the days in Ender's Jeesh, new enemies from the wars on Earth. To find security, Bean and Petra must once again follow in Ender's footsteps. They must leave Earth behind, in the control of the Hegemon, and look to the stars.


Review:  Oh, jeesh, where do I even begin? Okay, well I love Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. No one really annoyed me in those two books. I can't speak to the remainder of Ender's series because I got so bored listening to Speaker for the Dead that I set is aside for a bit. I've finished off Bean's series with this one and phew, thank goodness it is over because I don't think I could've read/listened to another one. Why do I keep doing it? Good question. Answer: Because I do enjoy OSC's writing when his characters aren't talking about religion, military strategy, or BABIESBABIESBABIES. And the readers for his books are absolutely fabulous. I wish I could just have them walk around with me and narrate my life. Then again, I'd probably be lulled to sleep a little too much. As you can see by the graph, my annoyances hugely increased from Book 1 to Book 3. (I listened to them out of order) It was only downhill from there.

NOTE: The 10% I don't find annoying don't really make appearances in this series--Ender and Valentine.

2.5/5 stars