Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor

[goodreads]

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Author: Laini Taylor
Genre: Paranormal
Rating: 2/5
# pages: 424
Date read: August, 2013

In general, Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she's a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to family. Raised half in our world, half in 'Elsewhere', she has never understood Brimstone's dark work - buying teeth from hunters and murderers - nor how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself, plagued by the sensation that she isn't whole.

Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing, and Karou must choose between the safety of her human life and the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.

I had very high hopes for this book as it came extremely highly recommended, but unfortunately it couldn't deliver. Giving it two stars is being generous, as most of the time I didn't care for it at all. It had small glimpses here and there of something better, which kept me reading, but at the end of the day it only just made it to "Okay".

The biggest problems were that apparently I'm not into paranormal novels featuring angels, and I just didn't care for Madrigal and Akiva's backstory at all - in fact, those chapters actively bored me. I liked Karou well enough and LOVED Zuzana, but that wasn't enough to keep me engaged, and despite a ridiculous cliffhanger (word to the wise - this is more like the first half of a book than the first book in a series) I'm not going to bother with the rest of the series.

Comments

[jadeejf.livejournal.com]

Bummer - I enjoyed it (and liked Karou and Zuzana way more than anyone else), but it kind of lost its pull for me towards the end (just got weird), and Carl got me the second half of the series, and I can't even remember enough about it to get started on it :-/

[bogormen.livejournal.com]

but it kind of lost its pull for me towards the end (just got weird)
This was my main problem with it as well! Had it just stayed in "our time" I'd probably have taken much less issue with it.