To be completely honest, I can't decide if I like this book or not. The first book was fantastic... right up until the point that I figured out what wTo be completely honest, I can't decide if I like this book or not. The first book was fantastic... right up until the point that I figured out what was going on with Karou's weird and annoying attraction to the creepy-but-oh-so-hot-bad-relationship-waiting-to-happen angel Akiva. But by that point, I liked Zuzana and Mik too much to throw the book across the room (metaphorically speaking--I listened to it on audio. I do recommend that. The reader is great.)
(Some spoilers follow, although not major ones.)
I also knew from the internet that Liraz was confirmed to be asexual in the later books, and I will read ANYTHING with an awesome asexual character because ace representation feeds my soul and is LAMENTABLY hard to come by... so yeah, that was enough to get me to book two. (That and the fact that book one ends on "to be continued." I hate "to be continued;" it's like it's practically daring me to sit with an unresolved ending for the rest of my life, which I admit, I do not have the self control to do.)
This book... is exactly what I would expect out of the sequel to Daughter of Smoke and Bone. If anything, it's better, partially do to the lack of Karou and Akiva being in the same room, and mainly to do with the fact that Daughter of Smoke and Bone was a first novel, and Laini Taylor was apparently just getting warmed up.
Her prose is gorgeous. Her worldbuilding is impressive. I love the magic system (although the wishing magic from the first book has been grossly underutilized). The settings are remarkably vivid. The way the story is put together--revealing some things to the reader before they are revealed to the characters, while simultaneously using those reveals to hide other things from the reader until the right moment--is often genius. (Except when it's not, see below.) There are so many great characters. As a writer, Laini Taylor is formidable. I listened to both books obsessively. I could not put my iPod down.
So why am I not head over heels in love with this book? Well, there's the rape scene, for one. I'm still processing what I think about that, besides that the deliberate obfuscating by the narrative of what happened afterwards was uncalled for. It exploited Karou's trauma for shock value, and did the author no credit.
Second, though, is the Karou and Akiva romance. This is unfortunate, because I love Karou, and I like Akiva, but the two of them need to go angst over their weirdly obsessive soulmate bond somewhere off-screen. Give me more of Liraz stabbing things. And Ziri being an adorable cinnamon roll. And Mic and Zuzana being awesome and lovable normal people being swept up in a cosmic battlefield because of friendship with Karou.
And the more I think about it, the more this book leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and it comes back to the central romance. It's less that Karou's and Akiva's love is so instant and powerful that it presses my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point, although that's true. It's about what their relationship says about the whole angel/chimera interspecies relationship.
Their instant attraction to each other is so instant, so powerful, and so unexplained, even once we know the backstory. The people closest to them just can't understand it (except maybe Brimstone). They don't understand it. I, the reader, cannot fathom it. It's Romeo and Juliet love at first sight, and just like in Romeo and Juliet, Karou's and Akiva's love serves more as a source of audience angst and as a literary device than as an actual representation of love. And that makes me extremely uncomfortable.
It's clear that, despite setbacks, any future Chimera-Angel peace agreement is going to be the direct or indirect result of Karou and Akiva's relationship. None of this would ever have happened if they hadn't fallen in love. Everyone's happy ending is going to be the result of their fated love. That just doesn't sit right with me.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: I picked up Daughter of Smoke and Bone just two days after the Orlando shooting, and finished Days of Blood and Starlight just before the Brexit vote came through. I took that real world of 2016 with me into the book when I read it, there was no way to leave it behind. And when the real world feels so divided into factions, where so many people hate other people just for being different or because they were told to fear them by others... Eretz's conflicts start to look pretty familiar. And I think that was intentional on the author's part. This isn't just a story, it's a metaphor.
And if Eretz's conflicts can only begin to be healed with this random, bolt-of-lightning, feels-like-a-plot-device love... then to me that sends a pretty depressing message of hope for the real world.
So maybe love is what can heal Eretz, but it shouldn't be Karou's and Akiva's parasitic kind of love, which is destroying both of them from the inside out.
It's got to be real love that pulls these peoples together. Love like Mik and Zuzana are starting to create among their Chimera friends, based off friendship and music and laughter. Give me an angel soldier/chimera revenant friendship begun out of necessity and cemented by the discovery of a shared secret love of wood carving or something. Give me an angel trying to cover his tattoos with new designs of flowers and vines, and a chimera knitting themselves gloves so they won't accidentally direct their hamsas at their new friend. That's the kind of slow, strong love I can actually see changing worlds, not instant Twilight-esque love angst.
I guess that's why I can't love this series. Laini Taylor has written a brilliant love story, but it's the wrong story for the world she's created....more
Miranda-Hermione
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