Wings as Drifted Snow, Eyes as Flame*

Daughter of Smoke and Bone

By Laini Taylor

Genre: Fantasy

Dive into a world of chimera and angels so real that you want to visit. Excellent writing. Excellent world building. Fantastic characters. It is like reading a complex fairy tale.

Karou is our main character, blue haired, sixteen, and attending art school. She fills her sketchbooks full of unreal creatures, chimaerae they are called – frightening, macabre, and the only family she's ever know. She struggles to balance her life in the human world with that of her chimaerae family's. Then she meets Akiva.

Taylor's incredible world building brought me in and kept me there. I want to purchase wishes so that I can tour the apothecary shop where Karou grew up with her family. Though, I could easily travel to Prague, where the art school that Karou attends is located. For the world alone, I recommend this book.

Then there's the characters. Ah, the characters. Akiva, the angel. Zuzana, the best friend. Brimstone, her foster father. Even Kazimir, the ex-boyfriend. They all are so well crafted, they felt like people (or otherwise) you might meet. Most of all, Karou. I was expecting to dislike her. But the mysteriousness of her existence and her own questioning really drew me in. In the end, I love her.

There is a romance. It drives the story. But an unusual romance. One where it doesn't quite sit right until it makes sense.

The story is woven together so complexly that there's hints along the way of what's to come, but not so much that I never really guessed as to the meaning of it all. I had inklings. Those inklings were all wrong. Even better. A story where you can't guess the ending is the best of them all.

Recommended. Hands down.

5/5 STARS

Classroom: Skip this one.

*Note on the title: In reading the description of Akiva, my mind kept going to the description of an angel from the Basque Christmas carol "Gabriel's Message", wherein, to look upon an angel is both calming and terrifying.