Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor | Review

It’s always so difficult to read a book that has so much hype surrounding it. I felt like I had to like this book otherwise the world and it’s mother would give me quizzical looks and be all like “really?”. Maybe this is the reason it took me a look time to like this book. Or maybe the first few chapters I sat there thinking “WHAT IS GOING ON?” for the most part. Maybe.

I probably started to get hooked about 45% of the way into the book. So not quite halfway, because I probably would have stopped reading if it had got that far, but man once I was hooked, was I hooked. Up until that point I found the main character Karou to be fascinating in a very-fascinating plot.  And then suddenly the plot was fascinating and there I was, hooked. If I had been hooked from the start I probably would have given it 4 stars but alas, I wasn’t.

The premise of the story is incredibly interesting and a take on many different aspects of traditional literature (ahem: bible) that I haven’t seen written before. Angels are finally described as having characteristics beyond their wings and demons are not quite what you would expect.

There is an undeniable amount of depth to this book. Karou’s thoughts and feelings come flooding out of the page and you can’t help but feel them all along with her. The main characters, the secondary characters and the settings in this book are so well-written and described that my imagination can conjure the worlds of this book perfectly and I could follow the (very varied at times) storyline without much difficulty.

Probably my only problem with the book is that although it was extremely well-written, sometimes I felt that the author used language which was not entirely necessary and interrupted the flow of the story. If you’ve read some of my other reviews, then you’ll know that I take an aversion to what I like to call ‘poncy’ language. However, it is likely that is Taylor’s writing style in the same way that it is not my reading style.

All in all, I’m definitely going to pick up the sequel to this asap! As I said, the latter half of the book enthralled me and now I absolutely must know what happens next.

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