Daughter of Smoke & Bone

 By Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is one of my favorite novels ever written by one of the authors that I have read everything by. It is a young adult fantasy novel set in Prague.

The main character is a young artist named Karou who knows nothing about her past other than she was raised by monsters; chimera who live Elsewhere, have access to portals in cities all over the world, and collect teeth in exchange for granting differing degrees of wishes.

Karou has a fairly normal life in the human world, only occasionally having to run errands for her monster family, until suddenly the portals start burning all over the world, and people have reported seeing angels, the enemies of Karou’s family.

I loved this book and its two sequels so much. I read it at least once a year. Prague is described so beautifully that it transports the reader there. But it is the world building for Elsewhere that is amazing.

It is fully thought out to the smallest detail and the descriptions of half animal half human chimera are so interesting. Fantasy is not a genre for everyone, but this is one novel that I recommend often because I love it so much.