In this world, in the city of Prague, a young, blue haired girl called Karou attends art school, hangs out with her friend Zuzana and draws monsters. Except in her case the monsters are real. Karou was brought up in a shop owned and run by chimera, creatures with attributes of animals and humans. Brimstone, the owner of the shop trades in bones and teeth and looks like a monster but is Karou’s family along with the other monsters in the shop. Karou runs errands for Brimstone and is paid in wishes in the form of beads which she fritters away (according to Brimstone) for trivial things like turning her hair blue and clearing up her skin. The Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy by Laini Taylor (The Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Days of Blood and Starlight and Dreams of Gods and Monsters) takes the reader from the protagonist’s insignificant little wishes, the beauty of Prague and the mysterious little underground shop which has doorways opening out to cities across the world to the deserts around Morocco and then shifts during the course of the trilogy to other worlds all the way across the Universe.
Karou’s life changes once she comes across the angel/ seraph Akiva and realises that the mystery of her own origin is more bizarre than she could have imagined. The angels are not necessarily angelic and the beasts or the chimera are not the automatic villains one would presume. But they are at war with each other. A war encompassing centuries and across space. The story goes back and forth in order to set out the history of the war and Karou’s own personal history.
The trilogy, as we have now come to expect of Laini Taylor style, is beautifully written and expansive. The reader is taken on a journey not only across worlds but also across an entire range of emotions. Karou finally becomes the heir to Brimstone’s ability of transferring souls into reconstructed bodies and all the problems that come with that knowledge. Akiva has to decide whether he must do his duty or do the right thing. There is adventure, friendship, humour, romance, villainy and self realisation. Very typically of Taylor’s books, the reader despairs at some point in the series as to how things could ever be resolved but Taylor manages to pull it off at the end. However we also suspect that the third book may not be the end. The world building and descriptions of various creatures are fascinating and engrossing. It is very difficult to not binge read the series and, as always, it is an advantage to discover a trilogy after all the books have come out. It is always so much more fun to finish a series at a stretch.
There is also a short companion novella to the series featuring Karou’s friend Zuzana, which is illustrated with line drawings and well worth a look because of them.
Spoiler ahead
We can well see the trilogy tying up with the Strange the Dreamer duology. Particularly since Sarai heads out on her journey at the end of Muse of Nightmares (see our review) , in the hope of finding someone who can make her a body!
Mostly Mondays 