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gabriellecarolina 's review for:
Daughter of Smoke & Bone
by Laini Taylor
Instead of explaining why DoS&B lost a star I will instead explain why I've held one back:
Daughter is spectacular. When it was first released the buzz was so heady it managed to turn me off. I held back, believing this was just another paranormal romance in a market saturated with the stuff. I'd had my fill, I didn't care how great the writing was, or how original the characters. I wasn't having it.
But my love for Laini Taylor, the being, beckoned me in a time of book drought. I feel I've read one hundred novels since the last time I ravaged a book, reading from cover to cover in a sitting, or completing an audiobook within a day. Daughter became that book.
The writing is great, the characters are original, and it is a paranormal romance, written at the height of the market for paranormal, young-adult, romance, spliced into trilogies. And this is the only downfall. Daughter manages to subvert tired, formulaic tropes while adhering to the formulaic structure.
This structure likely renders this fantastic first book in the Smoke & Bone series the weakest of the three books. So much time is dedicated to drawing out the simplest of revelations and then turning the cliffhanger on the point of a (likely) misunderstanding. Therefor only four stars, when it is, in some ways, worthy of five, because I believe the sequels will surpass the first book in the series. I will let you know when they do; I doubt I'll keep my grabby hands off books two and three for very long.
A note on the narration--fabulous job, convincing accents and hilarious inflections brought Taylor's already vivid world to greater life.
Daughter is spectacular. When it was first released the buzz was so heady it managed to turn me off. I held back, believing this was just another paranormal romance in a market saturated with the stuff. I'd had my fill, I didn't care how great the writing was, or how original the characters. I wasn't having it.
But my love for Laini Taylor, the being, beckoned me in a time of book drought. I feel I've read one hundred novels since the last time I ravaged a book, reading from cover to cover in a sitting, or completing an audiobook within a day. Daughter became that book.
The writing is great, the characters are original, and it is a paranormal romance, written at the height of the market for paranormal, young-adult, romance, spliced into trilogies. And this is the only downfall. Daughter manages to subvert tired, formulaic tropes while adhering to the formulaic structure.
This structure likely renders this fantastic first book in the Smoke & Bone series the weakest of the three books. So much time is dedicated to drawing out the simplest of revelations and then turning the cliffhanger on the point of a (likely) misunderstanding. Therefor only four stars, when it is, in some ways, worthy of five, because I believe the sequels will surpass the first book in the series. I will let you know when they do; I doubt I'll keep my grabby hands off books two and three for very long.
A note on the narration--fabulous job, convincing accents and hilarious inflections brought Taylor's already vivid world to greater life.