'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' by Laini Taylor

Length: 418 pages (hardcover)
Publication Date: September 27th, 2011
Publisher: Little, Brown Books
Source: bought own copy
Overall rating: 4.5 / 5 stars

'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' had been sitting on my shelf for quite some time and I knew I wanted to get to it very soon, since the third and final book of the series comes out this spring. This YA fantasy story follows Karou, an art student who has a sketchbook full of monsters and chimera. But Karou lives a bit of a double life and all these monsters and creatures are actually real and who she calls her family.

This book is pretty hard to give a detailed synopsis of, without spoiling anything, but the story centers around a very complex fantasy world that even Karou doesn't fully understand in the beginning. I really enjoyed that the reader was able to go along with Karou in her journey, making sense of things at the same time that she does. The fact that the reader, and Karou, are left in the dark for so much of the book, was at first a bit frustrating since we didn't get a lot of answers, but by the time Taylor wraps the first book up, that frustration goes away.

My hands down favorite aspect of this novel was Laini Taylor's writing. She has an amazing poetic and lyrical style to her writing, an element that fit amazingly well with the ethereal world she has developed. She definitely has one of my favorite writing styles ever, it left me absorbed and jealous all at the same time.

In addition, the fantasy world she has created is so beautiful, that I continuously wanted more of it. There is about 100 pages in the middle of this story that did get a bit a boring for me, since there was a lot of sitting around and talking, but the end definitely made up for this. The story  is more character driven during the first book, but I hear the second is very action packed. Overall this was a great world and character building first book in a series and I cannot wait to see what happens next.

I have seen some reviews of this lately from people that haven't finished the novel and complained that they couldn't get into it and were very confused. I can completely understand that thought process, but I also highly encourage people to push through, since the last third of the story is amazing. Go into this with an open mind and just take the details and character how they are, realizing it is a fantasy world very different from our own. I definitely found it worth it in the end and cannot wait to read the rest of the series.