Hardcover, US, 420 pagesPublished September 27th 2011
by Little, Brown & Company
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 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 one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored 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?
SHAMELESS COVER-JUDGER DISCLAIMER: I didn’t like the cover for this one AT ALL. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the mask. Because when I looked at it, I thought it was going to be about the theater or something, which gave me terrible flashbacks to when my teachers used to try to make me act/talk in front of people and I would have minor panic attacks at the very thought of it. So yeah, I didn’t like it. I still don’t. It makes me want to go stand in the corner and try to breathe slowly and calm myself down. Please don’t hate me.
But…in other news…this:
5/5 Stars!
Holy Frickin’ Heck, this book is good! I’m so very glad that I was paying attention when other bloggers were singing its praises and snapped up a copy.
Seriously. You don’t even know.
Karou is a teenage girl who has bright blue hair and can speak just about every language, has a hot ex-boyfriend and a quirky best friend. By every right she should be THE most Mary-Sue character ever created. But she’s not. I adored her. She has such depth of character, such feeling. Experiencing this world through her eyes, knowing what was happening right underneath the surface, was a huge treat. She is full of secrets, and those secrets tie in so perfectly with the mythology that the author has created, that I just couldn’t put this book down.
And her relationships—between her and the “normal” people, her best friend, her ex-boyfriend, as well as with the less than normal people, Brimstone and the other Chimera that had raised her—were just so complex and varied.
And Akiva…oh, Akiva. He was all dark and brooding and BROKEN. And as the story unfolded and you learned just why he was all those things…*sigh* you have no idea.
You can’t even know.
And you won’t know…not until you go get yourself a copy of this book.
Seriously.
Go now.
Shoo!
-geekgirl
Ohhh I just won this book in a giveaway and I'm really excited to read it!! It looks so good, and original! I myself loved the cover, so I can't agree with you on that one haha.
ReplyDeleteAnna @ Literary Exploration
By this point, you're probably wondering, this is well and good but what is Daughter of Smoke and Bone about? Trust me when I say, you don't need to know - just fall headlong into it! Any synopsis I would give would be pockmarked with YA cliches and you'd question what it is that's so different about this book. And that's where good writing comes in - transforming cliches into marvels.
ReplyDeleteYou think you've had your fill of angels and demons, of doomed love, of paranormal, young adult novels - make room for this one. Daughter of Smoke and Bone leaves all others in the dust of mediocrity.