Karou has never known who her parents are or where she comes from. Her earliest memories are of being raised by Brimstone, a creatures called a chimaera. Chimaera are a mix of human and animal bodies. Brimstone runs a mysterious shop where traders come to barter with animal and human teeth for wishes.
Between her studies at art school and spending time with her only friend Zuzana, Karou runs errands all over the world for Brimstone, collecting an assortment of teeth for him. It’s after running one of these errands that Karou sees a black hand print burned into one of the many doors that leads to Brimstone’s shop. Distracted in the moment, she forgets to mention this finding to Brimstone which leads to horrible consequences.
When Karou encounters a creature that seems to be an angel, something inside of her awakens, propelling her towards a reality she may not be prepared to face.
Laini Taylor is a great writer. She has an amazing ability to give readers back story and see what is happening from different perspectives in a seamless, interesting way. She also creates extremely vivid, beautiful descriptions. I thought all of the characters in Daughter of Smoke and Bone were interesting, especially Karou.
At about three-fourths of the way through the book, I got a little bored with a huge information dump, but overall, I thought Daughter of Smoke and Bone was a great book and I look forward to reading the next installment in the series, Days of Blood and Starlight. The audio version of this book was very good as well.
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Overall Rating: 
Parent’s guide: There is mature content in Daughter of Smoke and Bone and I would not give it to a teen younger than 18.
- Sex: a girl briefly reminisces about losing her virginity (not descriptive), the word for male genitalia is used a couple times, intense kissing scenes, references to ‘making love’
- Violence: quite a bit of fighting, a girl remembers being shot, a girl is badly cut in a fight, a war between two groups of people and some descriptions of after-battle, a girl is roughly grabbed by a wolf creature and a minotaur type creature and threatened, a person is executed, references to a person being tortured
- Language: some swear words are used, deity
