Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor
I don’t have any aspirations to be an author. But when I was reading Days of Blood and Starlight, I kept saying to Bart, “I am so envious that someone has the abilities to both write this stellar of a plot AND have it be so beautifully written.”
This is the sequel to Daughter of Smoke and Bone and it’s no second book slump. I hesitate to say it’s BETTER than Daughter, but if it’s not, it is definitely on par. I mean, it’s just so so good.
Also, if you haven’t read Daughter, just skip this review, because it’s going to spoil things for you. Run to your library, check out a copy and read it in a single day. Okay, then. That’s out of the way.
days of blood and starlight by laini taylor
So. Things were pretty bad at the end of the last book. Brimstone and company all met a bad end, thanks to love-interest angel Akiva.
The other half of the love equation, Karou (once a chimera, now a human), has remembered her past as a chimera, her forbidden love affair with the enemy (Akiva), and her subsequent execution and Brimstone’s secret resurrection of her as a human. The war between chimera and angels raged on in their world, while Karou lived innocently as a human, attending art school and having no idea that her betrayal of her people resulted in them being almost completely wiped out.
Not a happy thing to be remembering actually. Especially when you find out five seconds later that the only people who didn’t see you as a ridiculously horrible traitor (Brimstone and his helpers) are dead.
Karou manages to find the last few living chimera warriors and, although they don’t trust her at all, they let her stay with them because she’s learned enough of Brimstone’s trade to act as a resurrectionist, meaning that they can run off to fight the angels again, get themselves killed, and then, voila, she’ll bring them back in a new body.
Good times for Karou, you can imagine, sitting alone in an isolated castle surrounded by chimera who hate her and working with dead bodies all day long. Not to mention that she’s heartbroken over Brimstone’s death which she feels responsible for, since it was Akiva, her lover, who killed them. And. .. she’s still a bit in love with Akiva, too, which makes her feel doubly guilty.
And Akiva, too, isn’t having the time of his life, what with having lost Karou TWICE in one lifetime – first when she was beheaded as a chimera and now because he’s killed, without realizing who they were, the only family she ever knew. The war with the chimera is supposed to be over, but the angel armies are still out there murdering any chimera they can find, even if they are peaceful and harmless. It’s all a pretty bloody business, especially when you’ve lost faith in your cause.
With Karou gone, Akiva feels like he has nothing really left to lose, except his brother and sister, who he finally confesses everything to. Now he wonders if they’ll help him in his quest to atone for his mistakes by helping the enemy.
For as dismal and gruesome as this all sounds, the book itself isn’t particularly dark. In fact, there are some downright hilarious parts. Bart and I were both listening to the audiobook of these separately (him on his commute, me while I did dishes and laundry and prayed for small children to take reasonable naps) and at the end of the day, we’d quote our favorite bits to each other. The writing in this is just so top-notch, and the narrator brings these characters to life like you cannot believe. Her voices are funny, touching, and all-around perfect.
Bart mentioned he thought there was a little bit of slowness in the first third (after the story starts back up but before the action really gets going), but I didn’t really feel that way. I was pretty much gripped from the first word.
I feel like second books are so often just filler storyline – you’ve already gotten all the characters introduced and the storyline going, but it won’t wrap up until the last book so nothing too big can happen. Days of Blood and Starlight is not like that. I felt like you got to know the characters so much better and also some new excellent ones were introduced. Like last time, the plot unfolded in ways that were both surprising and so obviously right when you looked back at what had happened.
Like the last book, this is not for a kid – it’s fairly violent and there’s some adult-ish stuff going on, what with Akiva’s father having forty-trillion concubines and Karou working with a violent, womanizing wolf (literally. . . .).
The teaser for Days of Blood and Starlight says, “Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war. This is not that world.”
And indeed it is not. But it’s a world you will not want to leave either. I am dying with impatience for the final book of Daughter of Smoke and Bone series to come out.
Thank you for the synopsis of Daughter. I loved it when I read it, but I have bad remembering skills so this helped and also helped to remember to put the sequel on hold at the library.
I'm right in the middle of this one and holy cow, is it good! Usually I'm not a fan of the second books in trilogies but I'm cannot put this one down. So so good.
My only complaint is that I read Daughter of Smoke and Bone so long ago I can't quite remember exactly what happens at the end . . . Akiva keeps mentioning something that happened on the bridge but I can't for the life of me remember exactly what that was. 🙂
Happily, the author gives us enough clues that I think I'm filled in on all the essentials. 🙂
I think this book was better! The first was mostly love story, and this one had more than that to flesh it out. And I agree with Bart, the first bit was a little slow, but that being said, I still liked this book even more. Didn't know that was possible but it was. And the ending! Gah!
I had been hoping you would review this book! I'm glad you loved it. I am on the waiting list at my library and have been since the second I hear the book had been released. I loved the first book and can't wait to read this one!
I am so so tempted to just buy this. But since I haven't read ONE page this week, it seems silly.
Buy it.
You know how much I have been hanging out for you to read this. I'm with you, to write and plot so well — amazing. I said something along the same lines to my dad, something like, "She offers the perfect blend of poetic effort without distraction with well-paced action."
It is pretty violent though, eh? Bums to have to furnish friends with a disclaimer when all I want to do is cry about its wonder from the rooftops!
LOVE these books
I have book #1 out from the library right now, will probably start it this weekend. Glad to hear it's a good series! 🙂
I am just starting DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE and already hooked. Can't wait to read the second and glad you recommend it as well!
Okay, I didn't read this review in its entirety, because of your passion at the beginning for it. Instead, I checked out the first book and blew through it (we just closed on a house a week ago and I seriously still made time to read this book!). Thank you for recommending it and now the second book is on order from the library! I thought for sure that the names were going to throw me off, but the characters were so well defined that it never became a problem. Thanks again!