Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

Genre:  YA Paranormal Romance

Daughter of Smoke and Bone Series, Book 3

Laini Taylor's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Note:  If you haven't started this series yet, then don't read any further.  Go pick up the first one and get reading!

Description (taken from Goodreads):

By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her, if there can even be a future for the chimaera in war-ravaged Eretz.

Common enemy, common cause.

When Jael's brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people.

And, perhaps, for themselves. Toward a new way of living, and maybe even love.

But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz ... something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned, ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world.

What power can bruise the sky?

From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy.

At the very barriers of space and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?

A love story from past lives: Karou and Akiva.  As former enemies come together to defeat the tyrant empire, we finally see some form of the dream coming to fruition.  Just maybe Karou and Akiva will get that happily ever after they've been wanting.  But reality has something else in store for them.

This story picks right up from the last one where Karou is deceiving the chimaera into forming a tender alliance with the Misbegotten.  And while Akiva tries to come up with plans to stop Jael and the angels who have gone to Earth for weapons, the two opposing sides begin to do the unimaginable: they get along (after some small squabbles).  But back on Earth, the apocalypse has come: angels are upon us.  And a stranger is realizing she knows something about the angels that no one believes.  But when fate brings the right people together, it seems nothing can stop Akiva and Karou from getting their hard-fought-for peace.

I have to stop right here, and ask if there was something in the second book that foreshadowed any of this that happened?  Or was it all over my head?  Because I felt like this book took a left turn after left turn after left turn until I was all sorts of confused.  I felt like once we hit an acceptable climax, the story took a new and weird turn.  It was like the author refused to let the story end.  And about that ending?  Gah!  I'm opposed.  And the whole fact that it's totally open for another part to the story (even if it's not told from Karou and Akiva's points of view).

Am I the only one who thought this was the worst book of the series?  It just didn't jive well for me...  And now the story is over (well for now)...

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Genre:  YA Fantasy

Daughter of Smoke and Bone Series, Book 2

Laini Taylor's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Note:  If you haven't read this series yet, go read it now.  Reading anything below can threaten plotlines from the first book.  And oh, it's worth it to start the series knowing absolutely nothing about it.

Description (taken from Laini Taylor's website):

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 anoher 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?

Akiva cannot admit that Karou might be dead.  He barely found her only to have the truth open wide and watch her heart break all over again.  Even though he has done many wrongs, he will not give up Karou until he knows she's gone.  And what he finds in his quest begins with hope: karou.  But not everyone sees the same hope he sees.

Karou, a human girl who only dabbled in the mysteries of another world.  That is until an angel appeared one night and she broke a wishbone.  Suddenly, she's not that human anymore; she's a chimaera.  And the chimaera are losing an endless battle, but the war isn't over.  And with Akiva's betrayal, how far will Karou go to avenge her people?

I feel like I'm bursting at the seams to tell you a secret.  A really good secret that is totally worth it.  But I can't.  All I can do is hand you this book (or the first one) and tell you to read it.  Oh my goodness, I love this series!!  It's so unlike any romantic fantasy I've ever read.  And for once, I don't know who I'm rooting for.  You see people intertwined into varying plot lines until you're so tongue-tied you don't know what to say.  It's that good and beautiful!

You are truly missing out if you have not started this series.  It's a fantasy worth reading.  A romance that doesn't follow the normal trend.  Just go read it!

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Genre:  YA Paranormal Fantasy

Daughter of Smoke and Bone Series, Book 1

Laini Taylor's website

Amazon | Book Depository | Goodreads

Description (taken from Laini Taylor's website):

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

Yes, I'm one of those people who hasn't picked up this series yet.  But I have an advantage: I don't have to wait a year for the next one to come out.  In fact, the trilogy has already been released and I have no waiting to be had...

Karou is a seventeen-year-old going to an art school in Prague.  She lives a fairly normal life until Broomstone routinely comes a-knocking.  Using certain doorways, Karou is able to enter Broomstone's world, it's more like an office, where he deals in wishes and teeth.  Karou has always wondered what those teeth are used for and how she ended up as his ward.  But when handprints show up and a mysterious creature attacks her, she realizes there's more to this other world than she ever thought possible.  And she's somehow involved in all of it.

In my opinion, this book is the perfect starter to a series.    It starts with the question of who am I?  And we get to follow an interesting character as she tries to figure all of this out.  And the world slowly gets introduced with flashbacks of another world's past.  And as we learn more, we start to see this other world mesh together with ours, and we watch Karou realize it all.  And within this story is an epic romance, an epic war, and an epic choice.  And once it's all revealed, everything ends.  And it's up to the reader to figure out if they want to know what happens next (any one who doesn't want to know has lost their mind).

While I'm definitely one of the latecomers to this series, I'm very happy that I have the whole series at my disposal to read right away.  Because I have a feeling this story is about to get addicting...