Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love.
It did not end well.
Hello everyone!
Today was spent on a lot of computer de-tox as I spend a whole lot of time behind the small screen and typing and stuff, and my arms sometimes don't agree with me about it at all. Sigh, sad panda over here.
But it turns out I can actually bake apple pie! Which, for a person who hasn't done any cooking at all in her life up until moving to the capital and starting university, is a big deal. I am at war with our oven here at home though because it almost charred it with being way too strong for the settings that were in the recipe, BUT. You win some, you lose some.
Anyway.
Back to blogging, I tweeted yesterday that I had SO MANY book reviews lined up, I actually had to double check I still have enough movies left! I've been reading books left, right and centre, although this particular one happened at the seaside while I was still on vacation, and I can cheerfully say that I read the major part of it sitting at the cafe right next to the sea, listening to the sea gulls, drinking latte and enjoying the salty breeze.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone, here we go!
Laini Taylor wasn't an author I knew until I watched one of Christine's youtube videos and ended up noting down the fantasy series she recommended (I'm still struggling to start Cassandra Clare after the Mortal Instruments disaster, and Elfstones of Shannara are going ... exactly nowhere). Then I looked it all up and realized that, unlike some other series out there, this one was actually complete!
So I made sure I grabbed it before I left for vacation, because it sounded promising enough even though I really didn't quite feel it the first few pages.
But then it started, and BAM! I was in.
Karou, a seventee-year-old art student in Prague, has just broken up with a guy named Kaz, and apparently she's really good at drawing and her sketchbooks feature certain characters over and over again, which Zuzana, her best friend, thinks is awesome.
Little does she know that everyone Karou draws is real - from Brimstone to Kimishi, they are all demons, Chimaera, and they have been Karou's family. She is, otherwise, orphaned as far as she knows, and she does a lot of running around for Brimstone, collecting teeth, not that she knows why. She can do simple magic, with little pearl-like objects, and each year she usually gets a language as a birthday present (as in, the wish she makes lends itself to her actually knowing the language).
One day, on a quest for teeth, she runs into the Seraph, who have been hunting down entrances to Brimstone's workshop and leaving their marks o it so they could burn them all at once, and one of these angels, Akiva, attacks Karou. She manages to fend him off with the hamsas (eyes) on the palms of her hand, but there is some connection there we don't yet understand.
Wounded, she is sheltered at the workshop but breaks a rule and follows Brimstone through a different door and into a different world, a fortress city where, in an underground cathedral, she sees bodies upon bodies of the Chimaera - but Brimstone finds her, after she nearly gets in trouble, and tosses her onto the streets in a rage.
Her best friend is now convinced it was all real, and on top of it all Akiva comes and finds Karou again, although this time they end up talking, and they are inexplicably drawn closer to each other.
Because of the hamsas, Akiva has suspicions, and especially when he sees the wishbone that Brimstone managed to send out to Karou right before the shop was burned, it seems to be a confirmation, and together, they break it - and what happens is it returns Karou's soul into her body.
Karou is actually Madrigal resurrected, a Chimaera of the first tier, meaning she had never before been killed in battle with the Seraphim and killed, then brought back to life, and she had saved Akiva's life one time, which led to their connection - and forbidden love. However, they were betrayed by her jealous sister Chiro, and Madrigal was beheaded by the general Thiago who had wanted originally to marry her, while he tortured Akiva. Unknown to the Seraph, however, Brimstone managed to save Madrigal's soul and put the memories safely away for her while she grew in another body, unlike the rest of the demons from a baby to a full-grown human.
Akiva, however, didn't know this, and despite Karou/Madrigal's promises she loves him, he tells her, brokenly, that Brimstone and the others are dead.
This results in her leaving him, finding a Fallen Seraph who had previously been introduced, and having him take her to a portal which will lead her back home, to the other world, and hopefully she would be able to continue her mission for peace, which she and Akiva had initially planned for.
This is the first book in the trilogy (with a series of novellas in the middle as well) and I have to say, I was intrigued from the very first sentence out, although like I said, it took me a tiny bit to get into it.
But once I did?
Oh boy.
I loved it, and I can't wait to sit down with the second book. My heart aches for poor Akiva and Madrigal, although I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there's a happy ending somewhere along the way, because if she ends up with the monster Thiago I will scream. Literally. It will be a tantrum worthy of the one I had when Jon Snow got the Caesar part in his very own play. Also, I found it adorable to imagine baby Karou sitting in Brimstone's shop and playing with the tuft of his tail, because Brim is otherwise depicted as very, very serious and strict. That's just cute though! It was Rome and Juliet in a definitely new style, and I'm going to sit down to book two soon enough, hopefully.
I can't wait!
xx
*image not mine
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