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Review

“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil pressed their hands to their hearts and started the apocalypse.”

Laini Taylor has, at last, delivered the finale to her epic story of love, death, war and hope. 

I can’t really say anything about the storyline at this point without it being a massive spoiler for the earlier books in the series. But I will say that this book picks up immediately after Days of Blood and Starlight, continuing the epic story of chimaera vs seraph, with Karou, Avika and their allies beginning an uneasy alliance as they continue to fight for their world.

“Soldiers and children to as they’re told … Children grow out of it, but soldiers just die.”

The first part of the book is a little slow, spending time exploring the shifts brought about after the big cliffy of the last book, setting up the character relationships that continually transform as the story progresses, introducing some new big players into the story as well as continuing the UST-laden yet forbidden and ‘currently-on-hold’ love story between Karou and Akiva.

“The two of them were stoic and stone-faced and ten feet apart, currently not even looking at each other, but Zuzana had the impression of a pair of magnets pretending not to be magnets.
Which, you know, only works until it doesn’t.”

As with the last book, there are multiple POVs and different story threads which all tie together to give us a complete picture of all that is going on and Taylor builds the anticipation brilliantly in each of her storylines. Karou and Avika feature, of course, but not as strongly as I would have liked. There was a lot of time spent with them inner monologuing, and I would have liked some more dialogue between them, but there is a very satisfying resolution to their story.

“We are the beginning … We always have been. This time, let it be more than a beginning.”

The chimaera characters that we have grown to love are a big part – particularly Ziri (love him) – as are Zuzana and Mik. Their sarcastic yet light-hearted banter brings some much needed humour to what is essentially a dark story, and I absolutely love them! There is also the introduction of a new, surprising and most welcome romance that I thought brought a great twist to the story.

There are even more changes occurring in Eretz with stains appearing in the sky, and the introduction of Scarab – a powerful and mysterious queen who is searching for Akiva. And we also get to closely follow what is happening on earth with the POV of the bad guy, and the manipulative and infinitely creepy Razgut.

Another new introduction to this book is Eliza. Initially I thought she was there to provide the perspective of all that is happening on earth, but it turns out that she does have a big part to play. I did really like her character, and her role in the early parts of the story, but thought that parts of her story seemed very coincidental, and a little bit weird.

But we do finally get to see legend and mythology coming together with actual backstory to provide a lot of answers.

Throughout these books I have LOVED the world that Taylor created. It’s imaginative, it’s both beautiful and horrific, and I have felt completely sucked in from the very first pages of Daughter of Smoke & Bone, but the ending of this book just seemed to unnecessarily over-complicate things.

What should have been the big resolution to the story seemed very anti-climactic as the epic build up that she has created in the first books in the series just sort of fizzles out, and although there are a few moments of awesome, for the main part it’s underwhelming.

And then at 89% she introduces a whole new storyline with even more world building. It brings a whole new dynamic to the world, with its own massive conflict that doesn’t have time to be resolved, and instead seems to be a situation of ‘this is our new challenge to face’. It’s a fairly abrupt ending and I’m not sure if she’s planning a spin off series or if it’s just her way of saying that the fight will continue on for these characters but, for me, it was too much new information at such a late stage in the story, and I felt like it overshadowed the ending of the story she has built over two books which I have loved and been incredibly invested in. It was a strange way to finish her series.

“People with destinies … shouldn’t make plans.”

Having said that though, Taylor’s writing is, as always, beautifully poetic. The descriptiveness of her writing has created unforgettable characters and an amazing world, and the flow of her words are almost hypnotic as you are sucked into her story. She is incredibly talented, and I love that I was able to lose myself in this book for hours at a time as she brilliantly weaves her fantasy world in with the ‘real’ world, tackling some very profound issues while she does it.

“Wasn’t that what religions did? Squint at one another and declare “My unprovable belief is better than your unprovable belief. Suck it.”

As a mad and obsessed lover of this series since the moment I started “Daughter of Smoke and Bone”, this book was my most anticipated release for 2014. It breaks my heart to not give it 5 stars, but I just wasn’t left with the same overwhelming feeling of awesomeness that I had with the first two books. I did enjoy it though, and I’m glad that even with the unexpected direction the story takes towards the end of the book, it does have a happy ending.

I highly recommend this series to all lovers of well-written fantasy.

4 stars.

 

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone Series