Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Author: Laini Taylor
Publication date: August 26th 2011
Publisher: Hodder and Soughton
Age group: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Cover rating: 3/5
Content rating: 4.5/5
Buy: Amazon

Description:

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. 
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. 
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war. 
Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out. 

My thoughts:

The problem with hyped up books is that it's so hard for them to actually live up to said hype. That's not to say Daughter of Smoke and Bone wasn't great- because it was- but it just wasn't the mind-blowing experience I had been expecting. I still thoroughly enjoyed it and I think I will go crazy waiting for book two. September? Ugh! Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a beautifully crafted book that captured my imagination from the very first page. Laini Taylor's writing is so gorgeous it's impossible to not be drawn into the world she has created. What I loved most about this book was how intelligent it is! It just seems far ahead of many YA books in terms of writing and plot quality. I just adored the setting of this book. How refreshing! A YA book not set in a US high school! Not that there's anything wrong with books that are but wow it was so great to get something different. I loved the descriptions of the places and really liked the characters names. I was really transported into the world of this book and didn't want to leave. Taylor really knows how to paint a picture in the reader's mind. Karou was beyond awesome and so incredibly strong. A female character with a back bone? Yes please! She was so easy to identify with and I was certainly rooting for her from the very beginning! I enjoyed pretty much every character we met in this book; they were well developed and definitely memorable. While I can't quite bring myself to award this one five stars (I am seriously stingy when it comes to giving five stars) it was certainly an amazingly well written book and would recommend it to anybody who's getting a bit tired of the same old formula in YA books.