Daughter of Smoke & Bone

by Laini Taylor

Book Overview

The first book in the New York Times bestselling epic fantasy trilogy by award-winning author Laini Taylor 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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316134023
• ISBN13: 9780316134026
• Release Date: September 2011
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Length: 418 Pages
• Weight: 1.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.4" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 13 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 8 to 12

Customer Reviews

Epic!

Book one in quite possibly my new favorite trilogy! Adventurous and full of plot twist and magic and of course a little romance and lots of friendship. Absolutely amazing!

Amazing!

Lani Taylor has created a masterpiece that is full of adventure and mysterious tales, I just loved it so much!

Amazing

This is one of the first story about angels that I actually enjoy reading.

WOW! An Adventure

Im surprised!.. This book for me is like everything an adventure fantasy that I am looking for. Im thankful for some reviews while searching for adult fantasy book. My imagination take me back to the places mentioned as I have been there such as Prague Paris and recently Morocco. Makes me feel to go back again. I love this book. The concept and the story.

Unexpected Surprise

I honestly didn’t know what to expect from Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. All I knew was that it was a book with an interesting synopsis which has garnered very high praises. I didn’t have any expectations and went into this read with basically a blank slate. Well, that slate has now been filled with praises of my own for this wonderful book which I hope I’ll be able to sufficiently convey in this review. The first thing that jumps out at me about the book is Taylor’s writing. Not only was it beautiful, but it carried this romantic streak within it. When you have a story that is set in such unique places like Prague; Marrakesh; and Elsewhere in which Astrae, capital city of the seraphs, and Loramendi, the giant fortress of the chimaera, the writing should match to do these places justly. Taylor brought these locations to life, contributing in their own ways to the distinct nature of the story. Along with the locale, the characters and storyline really benefited from the romantic tone of Taylor’s writing. It added a rich layer to the characters in the way they were described and written out. And given the love story in this book, the writing really just went a long way in making the reader become immersed in it. As a reader, you really want to feel it and I truly was absorbed in the beautiful, complicated and heartbreaking nature of it and all of it was due to the writing of Taylor. I felt that having the story be narrated in the third person POV (unlike most of YA books I’ve read) gave Taylor the freedom to expand on the way she narrates her story and characters. She wasn’t confined to a single character mindset which would in turn confine the way she illustrated the world and action around her. This brought the book and its story to a more epic scale. As much praise as I have given to Taylor’s writing, the creativity and imagination that went into the story was just as amazing. I enjoyed how she took angels, chimaeras, resurrection, and the Romeo/Juliet-like forbidden romance and gave it a spin that was both familiar and fresh. I loved how she went about whetting your curiosity about these creatures and what they are all about (another aspect where her writing really brought the creatures to life). As the story unfurls, it raises that same curiosity to another level until that moment where things are revealed, pieces click into place and it seems like another door has opened up to you in regards to what you have been reading. And it wasn’t until these revelations that I could fully appreciate the imagination that went into the story. It’s really hard to explain this aspect of the book without giving anything away. It’s something you have to experience to understand what I’m saying. And for that, I apologize. Let me just say this: I will not look at teeth, of any kind from any creature, in the same light again. Daughter of Smoke and Bone was an unexpected surprise. I started out hoping for a good read and what I ended up getting was an amazing one. I always appreciate books that give me something that I haven’t come upon before and this one provided that. It had a wonderful story filled with drama, angst, action, magic and, the oldie but goodie, forbidden romance. The rich imaginative story and characters made this a hard-to-put-down kind of book. From beginning to end, Taylor weaved a story that grabbed your imagination, pulled at your heartstrings and left you wanting more.