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A review by crystalstarrlight
Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor
1.0
Bullet Review:
God that was painful.
Slow, boring, tedious and dark except for weird bursts from characters who belonged in a different book. It's not until the last 150 pages that something happens and when it does it's too little too late. Also needlessly dark, where every bad guy is a rapist and a pretty gruesome sexual assault in full blown detail.
Full review to come. Be ye warned: this will be a negative review about a book everyone other than me loves. If that offends you, just skip this.
Full Review:
WARNING: I get this is a very beloved book, trilogy and author. I did the math, out of the 97 friends I have who have shelved this book, 60 of them rated it. Out of those 60, 49 rated it 4 or 5 stars - that's roughly 82%. Only 3 of my friends rated it 1 or 2 stars - the book has a whopping 4.2-star average among my friends! That's HIGH!
The following will be a dissenting opinion and may make fans of this book, trilogy and author upset (though that's not the intention, but people get really attached to books, I've found). If you think it will make you upset, then I would recommend avoiding my review, because I will not censor my opinions just to make you not feel bad. Everyone is entitled to love/hate whatever they want. I will hold no ill will if you love this book; please be respectful and do the same for me.
WARNING: Spoilers for Daughter of Smoke & Bone abound. It's inevitable, sorry.
At the end of Daughter of Smoke & Bone, we learned that Karou wasn't really a 17 year old blue-haired, wide-eyed, drop dead gorgeous art student living in Prague. Karou was actually Madrigal, a drop-dead gorgeous chimera soldier who feel in lust - I mean, love - with a seraphim, her sworn enemy and got her head chopped off by Chimera General Thiago, Lord of Douchieness - I mean, General of the Chimera Army.
About 8 million pages in Days of Blood & Starlight are about how much pain both Karou and Akiva are in - Karou is in pain for all the secrets, losing Brimstone and her family for the second time, not being able to hump Akiva, and basically self-mutilating because she's the resurrectionist now and that involves pain and blood and bruises. (So much time to bruising and abuse in this book! SO MUCH ABUSE AND PAIN!) Akiva is mopey and moody and emo because Karou. For a book starring a woman named "Hope", there's an abysmal lack of "hope" in the book. Instead, it's just the same ring-around-the-rosie - our lovers looking forelornly out the horizon, wangsting over losing the other. When the book finally decides there needs to be a plot and action, it's ostensibly about how to get these two horrible groups of people - the chimera, led now by Douche Supreme, Thiago, and the seraphim ruled by Joram, Rapist Emperor and his brother, Rapist General Jael - to stop fighting already. Which goes wrong because, of course.
This book is so effing depressing. And long. And boring. And dark. Except for when the Three Stooges minus one, Zuzana and Mik, appear, making you wonder what book they were supposed to appear in and why the author threw them in here. Seriously, their appearance is so jarring - they are ridiculously chipper and perky and upbeat in this world where everyone looks like they popped out of an Evanescence video. They seem to have no concept that people have died, and Karou is bruising herself to bring them back to life. Nope, instead, it's all fun and games, playing the violin and being nicknamed neek-neek by chimera soldiers, being sappily in love while people are dying right and left. Not to mention, their contribution to the book is so lame, they could have and should have been cut out wholesale.
Actually, there's a LOT of the book that should have been cut because of it's lack of relevance. Things like the deer sisters, the Silverblade guard, Liraz, and other one-off characters suddenly appear, some getting POV's before we ever get a POV from Karou. Daughter of Smoke & Bone was exclusively from Karou & Akiva's (OK and Madrigal, but same thing), so to have all these random one-off characters pop in for their couple of scenes and disappear is a waste of my time.
And good effing god, there's a lot of abuse in this book. Joram is a rapist - he rapes young girls (hinted at being just at puberty) every night. Jael is also a rapist - he has his guards bring him a woman every night too. And Thiago is definitely not absolved from this - Lying Liar Lies! Deceiver Deceives! Abusing Abuser Abuses! No sh!t Sherlock - it's only a surprise that it pulls the wool over Karou's eyes so long. (You would think a woman with her experience with this guy wouldn't be deceived but idiots come in all shapes and sizes.) That doesn't negate one of the final scenes in the book, a brutal, fairly graphic, never-ending sexual assault that's likely to cause trauma to many people in its stark realism and brutality.
I get that Taylor wanted to show that both sides were bad, but come on. You don't need to throw around rape and deception all the time to show that these people are bad. Honestly, at this point, I'm nearly numb with all the abuse and horror of this world - why did I even like Daughter of Smoke & Bone in the first place?
The thing is, this was done and better in [b:Saga, Volume One|15704307|Saga, Vol. 1|Brian K. Vaughan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428350405s/15704307.jpg|19113524]. It's basically the same story - two soldiers on opposite sides of a war fall in love. But there, it's not needlessly dark. There, when there's humor, it blends in perfectly. The characters in Saga are better written, the story is more interesting, the world is more creative.
This whole book could have been called "Days of Endless Boredom and Abuse". It reminds me of those hurt/comfort fanfics, where authors abuse their protagonists needlessly just for the emotional feels.
There are so many things about this world that don't make sense - Akiva came to Earth in Book 1 to burn the doors, but at the end of Book 2, it seems that Joram and Jael are JUST learning that Earth exists and has weapons. Huh? Or what about how the magic works. Before, I could just ignore it and accept it as-is, but this book just makes a target on all the issues the magic system has. How can a person's soul be transferred into a recently deceased body? How does healing work? How can a man build an army by raping and impregnating a woman every night? At best, you would get about 365 children a year, children that wouldn't be "ready" for another 16+ years. What type of magic does Akiva have and what are the rules around it? Why can he sometimes go into "kill zone" and other times can't? Who made the portals to Earth and why?
Daughter of Smoke & Bone wasn't as good upon rereading, but it was still magical and beautiful and dark in a good way. Days of Blood & Starlight made me wonder why I even bothered with this trilogy - it's dark and dismal and ugly and depressing. I don't know why I care anymore that these people stop fighting. I don't know why I care about two people who fell in lust with each other should have the peace they desired after boning each other in a temple. The Karou that I liked in Book 1 is gone, along with her friend, Zuzana. The mystery and magic of this world is gone, instead replaced by this bleak, dismal world where everything is awful and nothing good remains.
I should probably just quit the series here, because 3 months of a 500 page book nearly made me mental, but I have the third book so I should at least try to get to the end. But I'm keeping my expectations very low.
To those that love these books: again, this is not meant to offend you. This is merely my opinion. You have to realize, I went into both Book 1 and 2 with hope - I am as sad as you are that I didn't care for this.
God that was painful.
Slow, boring, tedious and dark except for weird bursts from characters who belonged in a different book. It's not until the last 150 pages that something happens and when it does it's too little too late. Also needlessly dark, where every bad guy is a rapist and a pretty gruesome sexual assault in full blown detail.
Full review to come. Be ye warned: this will be a negative review about a book everyone other than me loves. If that offends you, just skip this.
Full Review:
WARNING: I get this is a very beloved book, trilogy and author. I did the math, out of the 97 friends I have who have shelved this book, 60 of them rated it. Out of those 60, 49 rated it 4 or 5 stars - that's roughly 82%. Only 3 of my friends rated it 1 or 2 stars - the book has a whopping 4.2-star average among my friends! That's HIGH!
The following will be a dissenting opinion and may make fans of this book, trilogy and author upset (though that's not the intention, but people get really attached to books, I've found). If you think it will make you upset, then I would recommend avoiding my review, because I will not censor my opinions just to make you not feel bad. Everyone is entitled to love/hate whatever they want. I will hold no ill will if you love this book; please be respectful and do the same for me.
WARNING: Spoilers for Daughter of Smoke & Bone abound. It's inevitable, sorry.
At the end of Daughter of Smoke & Bone, we learned that Karou wasn't really a 17 year old blue-haired, wide-eyed, drop dead gorgeous art student living in Prague. Karou was actually Madrigal, a drop-dead gorgeous chimera soldier who feel in lust - I mean, love - with a seraphim, her sworn enemy and got her head chopped off by Chimera General Thiago, Lord of Douchieness - I mean, General of the Chimera Army.
About 8 million pages in Days of Blood & Starlight are about how much pain both Karou and Akiva are in - Karou is in pain for all the secrets, losing Brimstone and her family for the second time, not being able to hump Akiva, and basically self-mutilating because she's the resurrectionist now and that involves pain and blood and bruises. (So much time to bruising and abuse in this book! SO MUCH ABUSE AND PAIN!) Akiva is mopey and moody and emo because Karou. For a book starring a woman named "Hope", there's an abysmal lack of "hope" in the book. Instead, it's just the same ring-around-the-rosie - our lovers looking forelornly out the horizon, wangsting over losing the other. When the book finally decides there needs to be a plot and action, it's ostensibly about how to get these two horrible groups of people - the chimera, led now by Douche Supreme, Thiago, and the seraphim ruled by Joram, Rapist Emperor and his brother, Rapist General Jael - to stop fighting already. Which goes wrong because, of course.
This book is so effing depressing. And long. And boring. And dark. Except for when the Three Stooges minus one, Zuzana and Mik, appear, making you wonder what book they were supposed to appear in and why the author threw them in here. Seriously, their appearance is so jarring - they are ridiculously chipper and perky and upbeat in this world where everyone looks like they popped out of an Evanescence video. They seem to have no concept that people have died, and Karou is bruising herself to bring them back to life. Nope, instead, it's all fun and games, playing the violin and being nicknamed neek-neek by chimera soldiers, being sappily in love while people are dying right and left. Not to mention, their contribution to the book is so lame, they could have and should have been cut out wholesale.
Actually, there's a LOT of the book that should have been cut because of it's lack of relevance. Things like the deer sisters, the Silverblade guard, Liraz, and other one-off characters suddenly appear, some getting POV's before we ever get a POV from Karou. Daughter of Smoke & Bone was exclusively from Karou & Akiva's (OK and Madrigal, but same thing), so to have all these random one-off characters pop in for their couple of scenes and disappear is a waste of my time.
And good effing god, there's a lot of abuse in this book. Joram is a rapist - he rapes young girls (hinted at being just at puberty) every night. Jael is also a rapist - he has his guards bring him a woman every night too. And Thiago is definitely not absolved from this - Lying Liar Lies! Deceiver Deceives! Abusing Abuser Abuses! No sh!t Sherlock - it's only a surprise that it pulls the wool over Karou's eyes so long. (You would think a woman with her experience with this guy wouldn't be deceived but idiots come in all shapes and sizes.) That doesn't negate one of the final scenes in the book, a brutal, fairly graphic, never-ending sexual assault that's likely to cause trauma to many people in its stark realism and brutality.
I get that Taylor wanted to show that both sides were bad, but come on. You don't need to throw around rape and deception all the time to show that these people are bad. Honestly, at this point, I'm nearly numb with all the abuse and horror of this world - why did I even like Daughter of Smoke & Bone in the first place?
The thing is, this was done and better in [b:Saga, Volume One|15704307|Saga, Vol. 1|Brian K. Vaughan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428350405s/15704307.jpg|19113524]. It's basically the same story - two soldiers on opposite sides of a war fall in love. But there, it's not needlessly dark. There, when there's humor, it blends in perfectly. The characters in Saga are better written, the story is more interesting, the world is more creative.
This whole book could have been called "Days of Endless Boredom and Abuse". It reminds me of those hurt/comfort fanfics, where authors abuse their protagonists needlessly just for the emotional feels.
There are so many things about this world that don't make sense - Akiva came to Earth in Book 1 to burn the doors, but at the end of Book 2, it seems that Joram and Jael are JUST learning that Earth exists and has weapons. Huh? Or what about how the magic works. Before, I could just ignore it and accept it as-is, but this book just makes a target on all the issues the magic system has. How can a person's soul be transferred into a recently deceased body? How does healing work? How can a man build an army by raping and impregnating a woman every night? At best, you would get about 365 children a year, children that wouldn't be "ready" for another 16+ years. What type of magic does Akiva have and what are the rules around it? Why can he sometimes go into "kill zone" and other times can't? Who made the portals to Earth and why?
Daughter of Smoke & Bone wasn't as good upon rereading, but it was still magical and beautiful and dark in a good way. Days of Blood & Starlight made me wonder why I even bothered with this trilogy - it's dark and dismal and ugly and depressing. I don't know why I care anymore that these people stop fighting. I don't know why I care about two people who fell in lust with each other should have the peace they desired after boning each other in a temple. The Karou that I liked in Book 1 is gone, along with her friend, Zuzana. The mystery and magic of this world is gone, instead replaced by this bleak, dismal world where everything is awful and nothing good remains.
I should probably just quit the series here, because 3 months of a 500 page book nearly made me mental, but I have the third book so I should at least try to get to the end. But I'm keeping my expectations very low.
To those that love these books: again, this is not meant to offend you. This is merely my opinion. You have to realize, I went into both Book 1 and 2 with hope - I am as sad as you are that I didn't care for this.