A Series Review : Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Titles: Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Days of blood and starlight, (Night of Cake and Puppets), Dreams of God's and Monsters

Author: Laini Taylor

Release date of last book: April 8th, 2014

Publisher: Little, Brown and Co.

All stories starts with 'once upon upon a time'.

Once upon a time there was a blue-haired girl, who collected teeth from all over the world. Her name is hope, and she lives in the beautiful city of Prague. Angels. Chimaera. Magus. Sirithar. Eretz. Cataclysm. I wasn't familiar with these words except for the first and second one (which was different from what I really believe. e.g. Angels-holy) when I read the Daughter of Smoke and Bone Series. The books are so thick I wondered at first how many days will it take me to read them. 3? 4? or maybe a week? But I finished all those books in just less than 3 days for each one of them.

Once upon a time, an angel tried to kill the girl or the girl had tried to kill the angel before but neither did. Hope remembered she was a devil and that she loved the angel. How many times did we have to witness star-crossed lovers all throughout history? From Romeo and Juliet to Katniss and Peeta, and the most epic one so far for me had been Karou and Akiva. Karou, the chimaera and Akiva, the Misbegotten/Seraph. Their love is just to complicated I don't even know how to start explaining. Like how could someone from another race love someone from a different complicated race even if they are of the same universe? And how could you love someone who was the one you love in a different era and in a different world but just in a different body? I know, it's hard to explain and understand if you haven't read it but is once you do, you will. I have never read a couple so sexually frustrated than these two, no kidding. The intimacy frustration is too much it affected me too like so much as well. But I respect them for having that self-control and abstinence and for putting first their responsibilities to their races before their self-interest. I hope all book couples we're like them. “The two of them we're 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 of course, you know, only works until it doesn't.”

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

This series started with lots of Papilio Stomachus and ended with a lot of Papilio Stomachus as well. Yes, there we're so many deaths that lead to loneliness to me. Like Haz, I will never forget that in a sigle book I have loved you so much but was fortunately I got redeemed from the pain. These books have been magical, enthusiastic and very different. No of them never failed to enthrall me, from the first one to the last.

But let's not forget, without a badass character a book would be boring. So here was Liraz, the dangerous beautiful Liraz. (I wish I could steal her name.) “Hot, perpetually pissed-off angel seeks living pincushion for scowl practice and general stabbiness. No kissing.” Who would have thought that my favorite character would soften with all that bravado in the last book. It was so adorable I almost cried. Who would have thought (not me because I thought he died I even mourned for him already) sweet, innocent, beautiful Ziri would be lucky as soon at last. “It was already hers. And clearly, judging by the state of her laugh-sobbing in Karou's arms, her's was his too.”

“Once upon a time, a girl went to see a monsters menagerie where all the exhibits are dead.”

Who would have thought that Eliza Jones (who was just introduced in the last book who had gone cray-cray) will be such a beautiful creature and even be the key to a lock that no one could open, even to a new world, maybe. Who would have thought, who would have thought.

“Once upon a time there was only darkness. And there was monsters vast as worlds who swam in it.”

“Be a samurai. Because you just never know what's behind the freaking sky.”

I couldn't care less about the darkness when there' are characters like Mik and Zuze in all the books. Without them this series would just be intense and just dull. Mikolas Vavra, the violin boy and Zuzana Novakova, the rabid fairy-is the life thread of this book, they kept me hanging just to get to their part and read and laugh and feel light and forget all the stress and tension and creepiness in the books. They we're just humans, but they are fearless and full of love and I can't just see anything so unadorable and unbeautiful in them. I think you have already guessed they are my most favorite characters in the books already and you're right. “Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.-Roald Dahl”

“It was not a happy ending, but a happy middle at last, after so many fraught beginnings.”

Favorite book of the series: Night of Cakes and Puppets

3 books, 3 sentences, 3 words.

Beautifully written. Perfect story plot and pacing. Starcross romance.

Read the series.

PS: Thank you, Laini Taylor~