Storybook Saturdays - Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy + Night of Cake & Puppets (2011-2014) by Laini Taylor

Her ignorance was like standing in pure dark that could either be a closet or a vast starless night.

Well I guess I’m finally back, almost a month after my last post about the benefits of tea (which you can check out here) but this post is still long overdue. I set myself the task of trying to re-read Laini Taylor’s magnificent Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy (with companion novel, Night of Cake & Puppets) last month, which, to my surprise, I managed. The only downside was I hadn’t reckoned on how long it would take me to condense my copious notes into something I could work with. To put it into context, I finished those notes last night. Yeh. Granted, I allowed myself to become preoccupied most evenings/weekends, slowing that process down considerably, but it’s done now and so, without further ado, let’s begin.

Now, my reasoning behind buying the first book was the stereotypical ‘I judged the book by its cover’ but when the cover looks like this, how I could not? And I was richly rewarded with the story therein. A mystery girl with the most brilliant sense of humour living in a beautiful city; a dual existence in a world filled with fantastical creatures and angels, and an age-old war between the two. There’s magic, romance, action, danger and so much emotion! To be honest that seems to cover the entire trilogy pretty well. But let’s dig a little deeper, shall we? (Note: my discussion from this point will encompass quotes and references to all three books)

Firstly, Taylor’s language – so beautiful and unique, I don’t know how she does it! I mean who else uses words like ‘be-with-able-ness’ and ‘un-was’ (to imply a thing simply ceasing to be)? Who else could describe a mirthless laugh as ‘like a soul pulled inside out’ or compare the devouring of multiple universes to someone eating biscotti (of all things) ‘but from the biscotti’s point of view’? Who else could take the concept of synaesthesia and turn it into a whole other language or use it to describe the feel of someone’s soul? (Have I gushed enough yet?) She uses repetition to great effect as well, to emphasise tension and panic and despair, or inserts witty internal dialogue to break it up and build character – and some of these thoughts are hilarious! Spoken dialogue also seems to come very naturally to Taylor, especially between her main protagonist Karou and pretty much every other character she interacts with. But my favourite is the early scenes with her and the angel Akiva – theirs is the pivotal romance, by the way. You can feel the threads of her past slowly trying to reconnect with his and its magical. As is the scenery in all the worlds.

The first book is set in Prague in the Czech Republic and because of this book alone, I want to visit this city. Taylor describes it as ‘a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century’, full of ‘spiking Gothic towers’, ‘medieval cobbles’ that ‘meandered like creeks’, marionettes, colourful buildings, hidden cafes, ‘snow and stone and ghostlight’ (there’s another one of those awesome invented words). But the real fantasy is in the beauty of ‘Elsewhere’ or Eretz, the other world where Chimaera and Seraphim come from. From the ‘clitter-clack of teeth strings’ in Brimstone’s shop to the ‘massive black walls and bars of the fortress’ of Loramendi to the ‘fluid upthrusts of crystal’ of the towers of Astrae, and the varied landscapes and chimaera of the ‘southern continent’ which includes the Kirin caves full of ‘an eerie, ever present ambient sound that was part dark and stormy might and part whalesong.’ It is always a tapestry of sight and sound whenever she describes a place and its history, one which she adds to gradually so as not to overwhelm you. And she devotes the same amount of attention to her characters.

When first meeting certain characters, Taylor will almost always give an in-depth and honest description of them, starting with the most important detail. Karou’s most prominent feature – her hair – is mentioned first: ‘loose, long, and peacock blue’, the rest being delivered piecemeal throughout. Her best friend, Zuzana is introduced by way of her being ‘a master of the eyebrow arch’ before remarking on her shortness, but similarly her description is built up through personality (of which there is so much, it’s no wonder Taylor gave her her own story, Night of Cake & Puppets – which I highly recommend: it is a funny, gorgeously illustrated quick-read). She also functions as the reader’s touchstone, if you like, to ‘reality’ throughout most of the story. By contrast, Akiva gets an entire page dedicated to his ‘truly, breath-stealingly beautiful’ looks and his unique amber eyes which seem to contain ‘live fire’ (the many ways Taylor manages to mention flames, fire, scorching, fuses or sparks when talking about Akiva is insane). Thiago – a human-wolf chimaera who is just as pivotal to the story but for all the wrong reasons – is also given a lot of description because secretly I think Taylor is in love with him. At first, all you get is this vision of majesty, lascivious arrogance, and whiteness, but by the second book he is somehow ‘more beautiful for the scars that made him seem more real’ and you begin to see how dedicated a soldier he is, and even question how justified you are in despising him – given the events which transpired in the previous book. But I will say, thankfully, you are allowed to hate him and leave it at that.

As I don’t want to ruin anything, I shan’t elaborate too much on the rest of the characters, but each of them is so uniquely themselves you could almost imagine they were real. You can hear Brimstone’s voice ‘deep as a catacomb’ or the genuine bright laughter of Hazael, Akiva’s brother; imagine the way Madrigal would look in the mist of the battlefield, head cocked in her ‘quizzical, bird-like gesture’; and see the hideousness of Razgut and Jael, the defaced and vile angels. And for several of these major or minor characters, you soon find yourself emotionally invested in their wellbeing, especially the women I found. At first, it’s merely the perils Karou faces on her errands for Brimstone, but as she progresses, you feel her fears become your own particularly regarding Thiago and his cunning tricks. Even the rabid fairy Zuze, finding herself in way over her head, is left with ‘scorch marks on her soul’ from facing death, the realisation of which seems to scorch your own soul with pity. By the final book, you are overwhelmed with emotion for pretty much everyone given the scale of the battle they now face. But you also start to feel for Liraz, Akiva’s tomboy sister, too. She’s so much more vulnerable than you think when you realise that, for all her previous coldness, ‘she wanted to be rescued’, and that love is an emotion she wants to feel too. It’s just such a pity that you don’t get more of her love story when it finally arrives; instead, it’s a continuation of the regularly scheduled Akiva/Karou romance.

Now I love a good romance: the flirting, the body language, the satisfaction when they finally kiss (and the physicality of what comes afterwards) but, if one thing lets this series down, it’s the romance. I am not lying when I say this particular one starts to wear thin for how cliché it is: Akiva’s seemingly psychic connection drawing him to Karou, his despair at losing her, his infuriating fears when he gets her back. I want to just shake the pair of them! Which is probably why I am so thankful for Zuze pushing them into a tiny hotel bathroom together to cure them of their blindness. And fortunately, this is a series built on war and trickery, so there’s plenty of action to spice things up a bit, particularly in Days of Blood & Starlight which perfects the art of building tension and only releasing it in the final third of the book.

And, as with pretty much every book I have reviewed, I feel I could go on and on – and probably give away too much of the plot in the process – but it’s only because I want to let people know just how great Taylor’s writing is. She is a genius for inventing a world and characters I wish were real, for dealing the bad guys (and girls) their come-uppance as they rightly deserve – I’m looking at you Esther and Morgan – and for occasionally tripping me up with false pretences! And that is why I had to buy the exquisite Illumicrate editions of this series as well.

(Also, as it is June and currently 28°C in my room, my laptop is causing me to overheat so I am having to bring this review to a somewhat reluctant end – but I will return with my next music review – as yet undecided – tomorrow night!)