Books Over Coffee : Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Shantall Vera
Apr 5, 2020
3 min read

I read this book years ago when it first came out and honestly I only remember small bits of it and the fact that I enjoyed. So I was so happy that this was Pages and Proses Book of the month. Revisiting this story I can see why I was drawn it all those years ago.

Title : Daughter Of Smoke And Bone
Author : Laini Taylor
Genre : Fantasy, Young Adult
Pages : 422
Own/Borrowed/ARC : Borrowed from my local library
GoodReads Link / Synopsis :

Around the world, black hand prints 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 grows 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 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?

What I Liked About It

We stepped into Karou’s world right away and found out about this double life that she has been living. We start with her human world routine and then dive into the one that she was raised in. Brimstone is a father figure beast that works with teeth, for reasons that remain a mystery until the end of the book, and grants wishes. To see her life through these two different contrasts made me happy. I also love Karou’s struggle in finding out who she is, what she is and where she belongs. Her confliction about these things made her seem a bit more real to me, though she didn’t have much development in this book, I want to see what else is in store for her in the next installment.

Another thing was the writing, the descriptions and the settings really make this story intriguing and beautiful.

What I Didn’t Like About It

**spoilers skip past this section to the overview if you don’t want anything spoiled**

Everyone was just in love with Akiva on the sole reason that he’s “super hot”. Granted his relationship with Madrigal might have started that way and developed into something more but it was still too Romeo and Juliet for me. She was running away from her betrothed and he “owed” his life to her, it was a bit eye roll inducing for me. I also hated that even though Akiva knew that resurrication was a thing he still reverted to his old ways, he just threw out everything he and Madrigal ever strived or dreamed of doing. He couldn’t have given Brimstone the benefit of the doubt and seek him out to try to converse with him about it? It feels like a total betrayal of someone you love to turn around and kill their family without trying to converse with them first.

Final Thoughts

I remember why I loved this story so much the first time around. It was about hope. Hope for a better future where violence begetting violence begetting violence because of some old conflict that no one can really recall why it even began with would end. I am a sucker for a story about hope, its why I love Rogue One so much. Brimstone said it best “Hope makes its own magic.” I did hate the love story aspect of this story but I understood how it is the catalyst for everything that is to come. I just wished that Akiva had more personality.

With that being said, I do look forward to reading the rest of the books in the series to see what the outcome out of all of this is. I never read the other books and look forward to see what is in store for Karou.