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bloodygranuaileIn the absence of there being a third Faeries of Dreamdark novel, I read the first book of Laini Taylor's new series, Daughter of Smoke and Bone. It was super good.
First of all, and most dangerously, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is conspiring with numerous other things in my life right now to make me want to get a tattoo. But I am scared to, so mostly likely I will keep dying my hair funny colors and getting things pierced instead. But man, tattoos always seem like much better ideas in stories than they do when your aunts are complaining about how much it costs to get them removed.
*herm*
Anyway.
This book is, at its heart, a romance, by which I actually do mean a love story this time rather than a knightly adventure or whatever, although it certainly has a bit of that too. It is one of the star-crossedest of star-crossed love stories I have read in a very long time, where, at various points, the lovers are (a) on opposite sides of a thousand-years-long war, (b) living in different worlds, and (c) on opposite sides of being alive or dead.
Our protagonist in this story is Karou, an art student in Prague, because Prague is mysterious and sexy. Karou has blue hair and lots of tattoos and draws a lot. Her best friend is named Zuzana, who is tiny and sarcastic and generally awesome. When Karou is not arting around Prague having awesomely awesome banter with Zuzana, she runs errands for her foster father. Her foster father's name is Brimstone. He is a chimaera, which basically means he is a wacky amalgam of beast and human parts, with horns. Her "errands" usually mean running around the world acquiring teeth. Karou doesn't know what the teeth are for. Brimstone has a nifty portal system where the door of his office can open onto any of a number of doors all around the world, kind of like Howl's castle.
One day, mysteriously beautiful people with wings burn handprints into all of the doors, and they stop working. Enter the seraphim, and our main love interest dude seraph, Akiva. Akiva is a soldier, like pretty much all the seraphim, because basically all the seraphim and the chimaera have been doing for a thousand years is warring with each other. Karou learns all this after Akiva starts mooning around after her being all intrigued abouther hawtness why a human girl is mixed up with the chimaerae, and they get in a fight but he doesn't kill her because he reminds her of his dead girlfriend from fifty years ago who had been a chimaera and therefore they had been star-crossed and tragic and she died. Then they hang out on romantic cathedral rooftops in Prague and stuff, and learn things about Karou's past and the war between the seraphim and the chimaerae and what Brimstone actually uses all those creepy teeth for, and Karou hatches a cunning plan to get to the other world where the seraphim and chimaerae live, now that all Brimstone's portals have stopped working.
As far as preternaturally hunky nonhuman boyfriends who occasionally watch people sleep like creepers and also spend a lot of time feeling bad about what terrible monsters they are go, Akiva barely annoys me at all. In fact, I actually like him! He has good reason to feel all bad about himself and make sadfaces about what a stoic relentless killer he has turned out to be, since grief can do terrible warping things to people, even people who are not trained to be soldiers from when they are five, and the plot is very twisty and allows for him to genuinely be terribly mistaken about things, so there is none of this self-indulgent Edward Cullen-esque angst-for-angst's-sake business. Just fucked-upness. Serious, serious fucked-upness. Which makes for a much better story. Also, Akiva's awkward attempts at humor are actually funny.
This book is lush--Gothic, beautifully descriptive, sometimes poetic, sometimes hilariously casual (like every time Zuzana shows up). The funny bits and the ethereal bits and the big damn crazy bits all weave together into a colorful, otherworldly story that is exactly the sort of thing I want to be able to write someday but don't think I'll be able to pull off. I will be eagerly awaiting the sequel, Days of Blood and Starlight.
First of all, and most dangerously, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is conspiring with numerous other things in my life right now to make me want to get a tattoo. But I am scared to, so mostly likely I will keep dying my hair funny colors and getting things pierced instead. But man, tattoos always seem like much better ideas in stories than they do when your aunts are complaining about how much it costs to get them removed.
*herm*
Anyway.
This book is, at its heart, a romance, by which I actually do mean a love story this time rather than a knightly adventure or whatever, although it certainly has a bit of that too. It is one of the star-crossedest of star-crossed love stories I have read in a very long time, where, at various points, the lovers are (a) on opposite sides of a thousand-years-long war, (b) living in different worlds, and (c) on opposite sides of being alive or dead.
Our protagonist in this story is Karou, an art student in Prague, because Prague is mysterious and sexy. Karou has blue hair and lots of tattoos and draws a lot. Her best friend is named Zuzana, who is tiny and sarcastic and generally awesome. When Karou is not arting around Prague having awesomely awesome banter with Zuzana, she runs errands for her foster father. Her foster father's name is Brimstone. He is a chimaera, which basically means he is a wacky amalgam of beast and human parts, with horns. Her "errands" usually mean running around the world acquiring teeth. Karou doesn't know what the teeth are for. Brimstone has a nifty portal system where the door of his office can open onto any of a number of doors all around the world, kind of like Howl's castle.
One day, mysteriously beautiful people with wings burn handprints into all of the doors, and they stop working. Enter the seraphim, and our main love interest dude seraph, Akiva. Akiva is a soldier, like pretty much all the seraphim, because basically all the seraphim and the chimaera have been doing for a thousand years is warring with each other. Karou learns all this after Akiva starts mooning around after her being all intrigued about
As far as preternaturally hunky nonhuman boyfriends who occasionally watch people sleep like creepers and also spend a lot of time feeling bad about what terrible monsters they are go, Akiva barely annoys me at all. In fact, I actually like him! He has good reason to feel all bad about himself and make sadfaces about what a stoic relentless killer he has turned out to be, since grief can do terrible warping things to people, even people who are not trained to be soldiers from when they are five, and the plot is very twisty and allows for him to genuinely be terribly mistaken about things, so there is none of this self-indulgent Edward Cullen-esque angst-for-angst's-sake business. Just fucked-upness. Serious, serious fucked-upness. Which makes for a much better story. Also, Akiva's awkward attempts at humor are actually funny.
This book is lush--Gothic, beautifully descriptive, sometimes poetic, sometimes hilariously casual (like every time Zuzana shows up). The funny bits and the ethereal bits and the big damn crazy bits all weave together into a colorful, otherworldly story that is exactly the sort of thing I want to be able to write someday but don't think I'll be able to pull off. I will be eagerly awaiting the sequel, Days of Blood and Starlight.