Kristen's #5: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

I had several people recommend this book to me within the space of a few weeks. And with very good reason. Daughter of Smoke and Bone was the only YA book to make Amazon's Top 10 of 2011, and it was the #1 YA book of 2011.

I'll preface this by saying I don't read or enjoy most YA lit. I read YA when I was myself a young adult and I liked it well enough then. Daughter of Smoke and Bone is far superior to pretty much any piece of YA lit I've ever read. Good writing is just plain good writing, regardless of the relative age of the intended audience.

Karou, the main protagonist, is a young woman with aquamarine hair that grows that way naturally who attends art school in Prague. The very substance of her being is a mystery. Karou puzzles her friends by going off on unexplained "errands" with practically no notice at all, disappearing sometimes for several days at a time. She has hamsas tattooed into her palms that have been there as long as she can remember.

The writing is luminous. The author, Laini Taylor (who as you can see sports some psychedelic locks herself) clearly has a sense for crafting turns of phrase. Her metaphors are complex and intricate. It's the first young adult novel I've had to actually look up the meaning of words, but yet the big words don't come off as trying too hard as they do in the Vampmeyer books.

The main conflict could come off as cliché (angles vs. demons), but it doesn't. And Karou is everything that Bella of Vampmeyer fame is not. Karou is self-assured, strong, trained in martial arts, witty, talented, independent, and beautiful. Well, I suppose Bella is supposed to be fabulously beautiful given that her name is Beautiful Swan and all but whatevs. (Sorry, I really didn't intend to turn this into a Twilight lampoon. But really. Karou is the anti-Bella. And it's awesome).

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is part fantasy and part mythology. Reality shifts as portals to other realities open. Oh, it's just good.

Be warned that it's the first book of a trilogy, and the followup books are still in the works (tentative release of book two in fall of 2012). I was glad that I knew that before I read the book so I wasn't shaking my fists at the sky with how the book ends. It's fabulous, but it's definitely a cliffhanger ending that leaves a great deal unresolved. I await the next installment with eagerness.

I don't really have much to say except that you absolutely should read it. I unreservedly recommend this even if you don't typically like YA lit or books with fantasy/sci-fi elements. The writing is that good.

I give this five stars without even batting an eye.