Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

I received this book for free from ALA 2011 in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

All of her classmate and friends think that seventeen-year-old Karou just has a vivid imagination and a penchant for vivid hair dye. They don’t realize that the bizarre almost human creatures, chimaera, in her drawings are not only real but the closest thing that she has to a family. They don’t realize that her hair isn’t dyed but grows in blue because she wanted it to be blue. She has always taken the magic lightly but then she is threatened by their enemy, but there is something about him. Cut off and alone she must decide who to trust and what is true and what side is right.

Karou lives in Prague, and the way Taylor describes it makes me want to jump on a plane right now but then I’d be one of those annoying tourists invading Karou’s favorite spots.  Everything is described in that manner which makes you want to touch it and see it.  The mythology is a good balance of based on the familiar but still something new altogether.  It lets you imagine it but you don’t have a moment of oh, that is supposed to be so-and-so.  It sucks you in and carries you along even when there is a large chunk of revelation near the end.  It definitely leaves a lot for you to wonder going into the next book.

And yes the next book is now on the to-read list.  I will admit that this cover didn’t do much for me, even after I read the book. I got very very nervous at the idea of a protagonist with blue hair, uh oh anime is invading my books… but in the end I loved what the blue hair said about her character and I got the cover even if it wasn’t entirely accurate.  I started this sometime after noon and finished shortly after midnight, so no it wasn’t a single sitting but I kept thinking about it so much that I was reading it while Skyrim loaded (and froze and had to be restarted).  If you’re a gamer you know that Elder Scrolls are about the only games you can pull that off with.  Anyway the point is I couldn’t keep my hands off of it.