Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1) in The Wide Web of Friends in YA Books

Dec 18, 2013 Alexandra Christo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: bomb-mc, forever-faves, authors-that-own-my-soul, that-cover-though, ultimate-fictional-babes, series-books-i-completed, fairytale-vibes

I feel a bit like my granddad saying this, but this book was splendid.

It's one of the most remarkable and uniquely peculiar books I've ever read; a plot littered with the fantastic and the surreptitious. It reverses age-old notions we have of impious devils and celestial angels, weaving a new myth entirely that draws from religion and yet never depends on it.

Karou is a human in a family of monsters, living two lives which she struggles to balance: in one she is an art student studying in Prague, ...more

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Jun 01, 2014 Sabrina rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, fantasy

I came to this book fearing the hype because I've recently read a lot of YA bestsellers that simply didn't impress me. Clichéd sentences, story lines, drab writing. The only thing that they seemed to do well was hit the formula necessary for running narrative simulation on some mundane level.
This book starts out strong. The author does a good job of pulling the reader into the MC Karou's world. Some of the characters, notably her best friend and ex-boyfriend, are somewhat stereotypical, but they I came to this book fearing the hype because I've recently read a lot of YA bestsellers that simply didn't impress me. Clichéd sentences, story lines, drab writing. The only thing that they seemed to do well was hit the formula necessary for running narrative simulation on some mundane level.
This book starts out strong. The author does a good job of pulling the reader into the MC Karou's world. Some of the characters, notably her best friend and ex-boyfriend, are somewhat stereotypical, but they are still enjoyable.
The book is split into two main sections, most notably divided by the entrance of Karou's love interest and her severance from her adopted family. It was here that the book loses some of it's strength. The love story is based too heavily on physical connection without there being a destiny to justify it (beyond the notion of hope, which we are repeatedly told has no actual magic). I would have liked to have seen the romance between (spoiler alert)
Akiva and Karou/Madrigal be based on some real connection, but beyond their ability to wish for peace together, there isn't much.
I'm not a fan of the cliffhanger ending that basically makes the first book in a series an incomplete volume. There is one story that has no resolution and you must continue to read to get that. I prefer linked stories that continue related themes, but each book should be it's own complete story for me. But I'm sure there are people who enjoy this kind of hook. For me it feels like a gimmicky cheat.
I also had problems with the repeated changes in chronology in the story telling from this division on. We constantly had to shift our chronological bearings and this was distracting to me.
Some reviewers felt the storyline became predictable and cliché from the division on, but I was not bothered much by this, maybe because I had to work so hard to figure out where we were chronologically in the story. I enjoyed the resurrection storyline, and felt that the problem came more from the lack of substance in the romance between Karou and Akiva that made this part of the story feel cliché.
Overall, I felt that the sentence level writing was really strong, there are some beautiful lines in the book. The story is a massive undertaking requiring a lot of skill to pull off and for the most part is done well. And compared to the majority of bestsellers I have read recently, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is far and away a more engaging read.
I think within fantasy novels, there is an expectation of surprise that is almost impossible to pull off. Surprise is more accessible in the thriller genre, where individual motivations have such a large roll and secrets can be held back until very late in the story. But in fantasy, there is a necessity to have the world and it's magic make sense, and this limits the amount of surprise that is available to even the most imaginative author. So I didn't have problems with the explanation of the fantasy elements in this book the way some reviewers did.

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Apr 08, 2015 Yasmine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, in-love, supsense, bb, badass-main-character, series, couldn-t-put-down, need-more, romance, freaking-loved-it

Wow!!! This was such of a good book. I started it and like a lot of reviews the beginning was boring and long, but damn the middle and the ending of the book was sooooo good. This was a refreshing book because it is so different then so many books and it was like nothing I have ever read. I love the main character karou. She was badass and everything about her I loved. I also like how it was told in two point of views. Now Akiva was great. I loved him and respected him alot. his relationship wit ...more

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Jan 26, 2014 Taylor rated it it was amazing

I ABSOULTELY LOVE THIS BOOK!!!!! The main character is badass, the guy is hot, and the story is intense. Can't wait to get my hands on the rest of this series. ...more

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