Of Monsters and . . . Angels? - Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor is the first book of a fantasy series about a strange girl who has blue hair, a puppeteer best friend, an angel stalker and a family of chimaera. The story follows Karou, a girl from the Czech Republic who attends art school with her friend Zuzana. However, the creatures that she draws in her numerous journals are really the chimaera with whom she grew up with. When mysterious seraphs show up and destroy the portal to her family, Karou meets Akiva and begins to discover the truth about her unknown past.

I found this book to be very unique, as I have read few books with even a mention of chimaera. I believe the choice to include chimaeras as the main species of the series, save for the seraphs, allow for a broader range of character differences as each character has their own design and distinction. Along with this, the choice to show seraph and chimaera as opposing species was a brilliant one. Seraphs and angels are known to be pure and beautiful but are presented as the enemy through the point of view of someone raised by the so called 'monsters'.

One of the aspects that I loved most about this book was the fact that, without spoiling too much, the romance wasn't unrealistic or forced and didn't ruin the individual characters. What I have seen often are characters being introduced solely for the purpose of giving another, already established character a love interest. In this book, the introduction of Akiva into Karou's life wasn't for this purpose. His role was to reveal the part of Karou's past that only he knew of.

As for the writing, I appreciated that the story wasn't action heavy. It was the first book of a trilogy so any over-the-top action would have felt unnecessary, irrelevant and forced. Instead, Taylor created a series of characters and displayed their personality, leading up to the future sequels. Although I have not yet read these sequels, I assumed there will be more action as the reader begins to understand the characters more.

Overall, I score this book an 8.5 out of 10 for its plot and detailed characters. I recommend it to teenagers and young adults who are interested in fantasy books with a twist or maybe readers who like a different kind of romance story.

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