Review: Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor

Days of Blood and Starlight

Author: Laini Taylor
Series: Daughter of Smoke & Bone #2
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre: YA Fantasy
Format: ebook
Release Date: November 6, 2012
Source: Bought
Rating: 3 Stars
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Synopsis from Goodreads:

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.

Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.

In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.

While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.

But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?

My Review:

I think this series and I are just not meant for each other. Once again, I didn’t hate this book and I did enjoy it, but I also struggled through it. Let me tell you my number one complaint about this book. The ridiculous amount of unnecessary detail. I’m pretty sure I could have cut out about 100 pages of this book. Don’t get me wrong, Laini Taylor writes beautifully and she paints a lovely picture for her readers, but my god it made this book so long. Painfully long. I found myself skimming through these massive paragraphs of detail just so I could get back into the story. It made the pace so slow. It would finally start to pick up and then we would get like two pages of details and I wanted to scream. I can definitely see why people love it because her writing is gorgeous, but for me it was way too much.

My other issue with this book was Akiva and Karou. I’m still not buying into this romance. However, I still like them together. I just think everything moved way too quickly in book one. But this book did what every other typical 2^nd book did. Separated the romantic interests for the entire book. Ugh. This just annoys me to no end. I want them to work together, but instead, they are torn apart for 400 pages.

I did really enjoy the plot of the book. This is still one of the most unique series I have ever read and the plot is elaborate and well thought out. Every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, Laini Taylor surprised me. She doesn’t make things easy on her characters and I appreciated it. There were a few times where I thought things were just going to slide into place, but then everything was turned upside down. Karou and Akiva have to work – hard – to attain their goals and really just to keep going. I loved that fighting spirit that lived in both of them.

I also enjoyed seeing more of the chimaera in this one. Karou is back with a small band of her people and it was interesting to read about all the different types there were and how they interacted with each other. Not only did we learn more about the chimaera, we also got a much better glimpse of the angels. I loved reading about the political structure the angels had and there were certain characters within both species that made me burn with hatred.

I think the ending is what saved this book for me. It certainly picked up towards the end and set the stage for the last book. I’ll definitely be finishing this series after a short break. Even though it hasn’t been one of my favorites, there are a lot of people that LOVE this series. So just because it didn’t entirely work for me doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. I definitely encourage you to give it a try.

Have you read this one yet? What did you think? Did you find the massive amount of detail cumbersome?