Daughter of Smoke & Bone
Laini Taylor, 2011
Fantasy Young adultRomanceHorror
Prague, a blue-haired art student, and an ancient war between angels and monsters that turns out to be a love story. A lyrical, longing voice carries you through Prague and a war between angels and monsters, with wonder and dread close behind.
Feels like longing, wonder and dread. About love, war and identity.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy YA fantasy that mixes romance with a mythic, horror-tinged war and a vividly drawn Prague. Be aware that the angel-and-monster conflict brings real dread and some horror elements, so it is not a purely light romance.
Why read it
It gives you a love story tangled with an old war, and a city that feels alive around the characters.
A page from the book
It is very hard to see the thing everyone else already sees.
It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry ‘Monster!’ and looked behind him. Laini Taylor.Taylor's husband, the artist Jim Di Bartolo, illustrated her collection Lips Touch: Three Times and their later collaboration Nightborn.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Daughter of Smoke & Bone for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy YA fantasy that mixes romance with a mythic, horror-tinged war and a vividly drawn Prague. Be aware that the angel-and-monster conflict brings real dread and some horror elements, so it is not a purely light romance.
- What is Daughter of Smoke & Bone like?
- A lyrical, longing voice carries you through Prague and a war between angels and monsters, with wonder and dread close behind. Feels like longing, wonder and dread. About love, war and identity.
- What should I read after Daughter of Smoke & Bone?
- If you liked Daughter of Smoke & Bone, try This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar), Obsidian (Jennifer L. Armentrout) and Imagine Me (Tahereh Mafi).
A taste of the feed
What do you bring someone who has all of time?
I want to be a body for you. I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious—I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in ten years or a thousand. Flowers grow far away on a planet they’ll call Cephalus, and these flowers bloom once a century, when the living star and its black-hole binary enter conjunction.I want to fix you a bouquet of them, gathered across eight hundred thousand years, so you can draw our whole engagement in a single breath, all the ages we’ve shaped together.
This Is How You Lose the Time War · Amal El-Mohtar
Hostility this polished is usually something else entirely.
Thanks,” I muttered and added under my breath, “Douchebag.” He laughed, deep and throaty. “Now that’s not very ladylike, Kittycat.” I whipped around. “Don’t ever call me that,” I snapped. “It’s better than calling someone a douchebag, isn’t it?” He pushed out the door. “This has been a stimulating visit. I’ll cherish it for a long time to come.” Okay. That was it. “You know, you’re right. How wrong of me to call you a douchebag. Because a douchebag is too nice of a word for you,” I said, smiling sweetly. “You’re a dickhead.” “A dickhead?” he repeated. “How charming.” I flipped him off.
Obsidian · Jennifer L. Armentrout
The particular fury of a wedding morning with nothing to wear.
But it’s my wedding day,” she says. “And I have nothing to wear.” “You’re right.” I kiss the top of her head. “I’m going to kill him.
Imagine Me · Tahereh Mafi
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