Series review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

★★★★★

Karou was plagued by the notion that she wasn’t whole. She didn’t know what this meant, but it was a lifelong feeling, a sensation akin to having forgotten something.

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy has been a weird one for me to read. Usually, when I start a series that is fully published, I marathon the whole thing. That’s just the most enjoyable way for me to read series, and also why I generally prefer series than standalones. Anyway, that’s not what I managed to do when I first started reading this last year, so I ended up reading only the first two books before being hit by a huge reading slump. I still enjoyed both of them, but it wasn’t the books’ fault.
When I picked them all up again this past month, I did manage to read all of them finally, but it took me longer than normal for some reason because I kept being distracted, and also that’s around the time I started this blog and my fanfiction. Despite all that, I loved these books.

The writing is something that really resonated with me. That’s a very personal thing, because I know some people who were initially put off by it (and once -some of them at least- they looked past that, they ended up loving this series). It is lyrical, poetic, humorous at times, and it definitely fit the story it was telling. I’m really looking forward to reading more by Laini Taylor, to see if she can capture me again like she did with this trilogy.

The story was completely beautiful. It’s an urban fantasy that features humans, angels (not in the religious way) and chimaera, as well as two separate worlds (Earth and Eretz). Love is definitely one of the main themes, but as much as the romance is a really important element, it’s not the only one. In fact, throughout the series there are so many themes that are discussed or mentioned, and while not all of them reach a conclusion and are only mentioned in passing, they still make you think.

I can’t really say which part of these books I enjoyed most, but something I care very much about when I read is the way characters are portrayed, and I have to say I wasn’t disappointed. Both the main characters and the secondary ones were really well done and I even found some of my new all-time-favorites in them.

The world building was honestly amazing. Things start off on Earth (specifically in Prague) and slowly you learn that there are other creatures (chimaera and angels), and then you learn there’s another world, and then you learn there’s magic, and…well, saying more would be very spoilery, but I can only say at the end of the third book there’s a lot more than you thought at the beginning. There’s never any info-dump and everything is slowly built and thus it’s made credible.

If you want to check out my individual reviews you can do so on goodreads:
–Daughter of Smoke and Bone
–Days of Blood and Starlight
–Dreams of Gods and Monsters

Needless to say, I gave all of these books 5 stars (maybe 4,75 to the first one) and I really recommend this series to everyone!