Review Detail

I would never have picked this book up on my own, but desperate for something to do while waiting to meet up with friends (and having forgotten to bring the novel I was currently reading along with me) I dropped into a local bookstore and asked the sales girl to recommend a good and unique YA book. Several of the titles she suggested I had previously read, but then she picked up Daughter of Smoke and Bone…

What’s it about? Karou has two lives. One as an art student in Prague, and the other Elsewhere. Raised by Brimstone, a monstrous creature and the closest thing she has to family, Karou must work as his errand girl, leaving her life on Earth in order to do his bidding. She travels the world, collecting teeth from hunters and murderers, yet she has never been privy to why Brimstone requires such things. When the portals between Karou’s two worlds begin to close, she is forced work together with her enemy in order to discover the secrets of her past, and discover who she really is.

Sydney says… Oh, man! I am so absolutely happy that I actually took the advice of the salesgirl on this one! Daughter of Smoke and Bone is something special. It’s completely different to anything else I have ever read. The detail was just amazing and the back story was intricately weaved throughout the narrative, allowing the reader to remain interested from beginning to end. I have to say that there were many instances that frustrated me because I wanted the story to go a certain way, however, this just added to the experience and kept the pages turning. The characters, particularly the Chimaera, were developed to perfection and I loved the character of Karou (though less as Madrigal). Perhaps the one negative, keeping in mind that I love long books, is that it really could have been half the length and still been a winner. There was a lot of unnecessary filler. To be fair, though, this filler is the sort of stuff that can take a text from commercial to literary fiction.