Review Detail

Let me say up front, this was a supremely difficult book for me to rate/review...especially in coming up with a spoiler-free assessment. But it deserves that much, so here we go.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone begins as a sort of YA urban-fantasy, teetering on the verge of New Adult thanks to the heroine's raised-by-monsters state of independence and the Euro-centric cultural feel. (Oh, and more mentioning of 'penis' than I normally encounter in YA.) I would argue that, at a little past the halfway mark, the whole tone shifts and we're plunged into a full-on NA Fantasy...but I'll get to that a little later.

The story more or less swept me off my feet from the onset, and into the tantalizing vividness of modern-day Prague. The city itself was probably my favorite character. (At once archaic and exotic, by my meager American standards.) The heroine, Karou, lives what must be every art student's reverie—though she's also adrift, not allowed to know who or what she is. I flew through the first half and can honestly say I loved it—largely due to Laini Taylor's evocative prose and liquid-awesome style. Beautiful, darkly complex writing that rolls around in the mind and clings like a warm syrup.

While I deeply enjoyed the first 250 pages or so, I also have to say the dropping of details and backstory was somewhat sparse. The reader is strung along at great length waiting for more pieces of the puzzle. I was willing to be patient, hoping for a grand payoff. But what I ultimately encountered was a sort of atom-bomb of world-building encased in one of the longest flashbacks I've ever encountered. The abrupt surge of other-worldly sociopolitical, cultural, historical, alternate mythological, and fantasy elements left my head a bit muddled. At that point, it also seemed like we lost Karou and had to become acquainted with someone else entirely. And for this reader at least, that last 1/3rd of the book became a somewhat dissonant slog that almost felt like an entirely different book.

Oh, and there's insta-love—or near enough to it. Which is apparently fated, but I'm not clear on why. Don't get me wrong—I appreciated the fantasy parallels to Romeo and Juliet. But as the hero/love interest, Akiva fell a bit flat. He just seemed to be missing some intangible -something- I couldn't quite put my finger on, but which would have made him come more alive. And at the (somewhat dismal) end...I find I'm still not clear on why, exactly, so much critical information was kept from Karou. (If someone can offer some reasoning I may have missed, I'm all ears! Er...eyes? >.> But certainly not teeth, hehe.)

I will be keeping an eye out for more of Taylor's works. A different sort of plotline could make all the difference, and her way with words is too delectable not to sample further.