Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love.
It did not end well.
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| goodreads.com |
This first tragically poetic line is one that would have
most rolling their eyes. This book, however, like its first line, is not at all
what is seems. We’ve all seen the most clichéd approaches to romance brewing
within the crowd-pleasing section of the YA plot factory: the butchered analogy
of magnetic poles to represent opposites attracting, the “thrill” of forbidden
romance, the dreaded love triangle/square/pentagon/whatever-the-hell-it-is-shape,
and a splash of hot, supernatural, consistently half-naked men to get the
fangirls going. We’ve all seen these horrific staples on the YA shelves, to the
point where it seems that it’s all we ever read. But fear not, YA fiction
pioneers, for there is a shining beacon of hope in the young adult world. This
beacon hardly has a cliché to its name, due to the author’s imaginative
reinvention and ability to put spins on what has already been overused by
others in fantasy. This fantastic and beautifully written addition to the YA
lit world is Daughter of Smoke and Bone
by Laini Taylor.
In the wintery dark streets of modern day Prague, we meet
Karou, an eccentric art student who possesses natural blue hair, a necklace
that grants wishes, and a portfolio filled with sketches of strikingly vivid monsters.
These monsters include Issa, the stunning serpent woman, and Brimstone, the
large and stern-faced ram-headed man—monsters that Karou’s friends believe could
only exist in the imagination. But these characters are anything but imaginary;
they are real and exist behind a door that bridges their fantastical realm to
the real world. For her whole life, Karou has worked as their errand girl, completing
odd tasks such as collecting teeth for Brimstone. But other stranger happenings
occur: mysterious black handprints are seared onto doors all over the world,
and winged culprits are seen hovering nearby at the scenes of such vandalism.
Enter Akiva, an angel dark in nature, whose life collides with Karou’s when
they meet. Strangers intrigued by the other at first, they then start learning
more about one another that unravels the mysteriousness of Karou’s identity,
and her shocking connection to the fire-eyed angel Akiva. The novel then
naturally unfolds into less of a simple boy-meets-girl love tale; instead, it
catches and traps the reader into the midst of an otherworldly war that’s been
going on for generations, a war that once ripped apart an epic romance of the past
and threatens and haunts the characters of the present.
There is so much to love about DS&B for some pretty
obvious reasons. For starters, this story takes place in freaking Prague—not
some plucky small town, not some oppressed society ambiguously located in the
future, not in some high school where mean girls actually pose as threats to
the protagonist. No, Taylor gives this story a solid setting that is so lush
and colorfully described that you just want to eat it like it’s delicious
Prague-filled goulash. It’s refreshing to read about an environment across the
globe and very different from our own, and Taylor’s fantastic at placing the
reader exactly where the story goes in her evocative and descriptive writing.
Another aspect I commend in this book is Taylor’s
exceptional writing style. In this book, you will find no circuitous and whiny
internal rants or unrealistic banter that accidentally creates painfully
awkward sexual tension. What Taylor writes, you can actually envision—she is
the supreme overlord of the ‘show and not tell’ rule, but she is as subtle as a
ninja. The author does not go on for miles how devastatingly handsome the love
interest is, and the heroine doesn’t press the pause button on her life just so
she can gawk at his beauty for odd amounts of time. I could literally go on and on about how much I admire the
amount of swag in this woman’s style. It’s so poetic, clever, and graceful I
feel at times as though I’m reading a book authored by a creative woodland
nymph. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It’s a great thing—good for the tone of
the story and the nature of the plot. I’m not a particularly flowery person
myself, but by the end of this book I was desperately begging for more magical
literary dewdrops and posies.
The last thing I will mention on this list of book worship
would be how much I appreciate the ambitiousness of this story. It is not a
product of the copycat syndrome or a follower on the commercial caravan of
currently popular genres. Sure, there is a bit of angel lore and a whole lot of
fantasy—but it does not just end there. Taylor does what every author (not just
YA) should do—take something that’s been done, and make it their own. After Twilight, there was a flood of vampire
stories. After Hunger Games, there
came a massive plethora of dystopias. With Daughter
of Smoke and Bone, however, this book just overflows with Laini Taylor’s
magic that anyone would look foolish to try and mimic it. Although I love this
book to bits and pieces, there is nothing I take more from it than the desire
to have ideas as grand as Taylor’s and the ability to put creative twists and
turns where they are needed. From the characters to the setting to the overall
design of the story, I ultimately see the whole picture as an author trusting
her voice, her vision, and her creativity—and clearly, it pays off in the end. It’s
a book, I think, that belongs with the others that challenge the integrity of
the YA fiction market today. It makes readers want to write and writers want to
think. Any book that can do that, in my opinion, is definitely one worth
checking out.
Written by Janella Angeles
