Review: Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

From Goodreads: The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around - and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving? The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries - including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

My Rating: 4.5 hearts 

Thoughts on the Novel: Having read a few books that I rated as 3-stars or lower in a row, I decided to turn to a novel that I knew wouldn’t disappoint, Laini Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer. I was hooked right from the prologue, as a girl falls from the sky in the city of Weep and is impaled by a point on an iron gate. I love spectacularly violent deaths!

We then go back in time to be introduced to Lazlo Strange, a librarian who has dreamed of visiting the mysterious city of Weep his entire life. Penniless and unable to do so because as a foreigner he would be executed on sight, Lazlo continues to work as a librarian … until Weep’s warriors come to Zosma, seeking outsiders that can help them with a mission. There’s a shadow over Weep, and Lazlo will need to uncover the city's secrets if he wants to help its residents.

As always, Taylor’s writing is gorgeous, and the worldbuilding is fantastic. The characters were also fabulously written, with Taylor making me care about her secondary characters as much as I cared about Lazlo. Really, the only flaws of Strange the Dreamer were that the star-crossed romance was insta-love and that Taylor ended the book with such a twist that I can’t believe I’ll have to wait at least a year to read the sequel, The Muse of Nightmares.

Strange the Dreamer was released in March 2017 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. 

Comments About the Cover: It’s quite plain looking and doesn’t really do the inside of the book justice.

Review: Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

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. 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. 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?

My Rating: 4 hearts 

Thoughts on the Novel: If it wasn’t for the blogging community, I probably would have never read Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series. Eventually succumbing to the hype, I read both Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight last year, and have been eagerly waiting since for Dreams of Gods and Monsters.

Since my thoughts about Dreams of Gods and Monsters are pretty scattered and I want to limit the amount of spoilers in my review, I decided to do a pros and cons list. 

Pros:

• Taylor’s writing remains as beautiful as ever.
• While a part of me acknowledges that Karou forgave Akiva a bit too easily, another part of me understands that it was inevitable because peace would only occur between the chimaera and seraphim if their leaders put aside their need for vengeance. The romantic tension between Karou and Akiva was just so good!
• I loved the slow growth of Liraz as a character over the course of the trilogy, but especially over this novel.

Cons: 

• Every time I got to Eliza’s POV during the first two-thirds of the novel, I had to force myself to read it because I knew that she was important. But, I just had an unbelievably difficult time caring about her, and resented her for taking away precious page time from Karou and Akiva. I would have liked to see her importance to the story be revealed earlier.
• The inclusion of the Stelians not only made Jael’s surrender too simple, but also expanded the worldbuilding way too much for my liking. By the end, the focus wasn’t so much on the war between the chimaera and seraphim and its resolution, but on the greater war threatening Eretz. I totally didn’t understand all the talk about the godstars, and was disappointed to not learn, for example, why Akiva is so special, even by Stelian standards.
• Although I thought the person Ziri ended up with was perfect for him, I wasn’t completely sold on the romance because he had been crushing on Karou for pretty much the whole series. It just seemed like he developed feelings for someone else after one interaction with them – an interaction that readers aren't even privy to!

The final book in the trilogy, Dreams of Gods and Monsters provides enough closure so that readers will be satisfied, yet leaves the door open for a possible return to the world of Eretz if Taylor chooses to do so in the future.

Dreams of Gods and Monsters was released by Little, Brown & Company in April 2014. 

Comments About the Cover: It kind of creeps me out, which I guess is okay considering the title.

Review: Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

From Goodreads: 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 Rating: 5 hearts 

Thoughts on the Novel: Since I loved Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, another sequel that I caught up on over my winter break was Days of Blood and Starlight. Besides having more of Akiva’s perspective *cue my inner fangirl screaming*, I loved that Days of Blood and Starlight was a much darker read with some very surprising twists. 

Although the main perspectives remain Akiva's and Karou's, Days of Blood and Starlight enables you to get into the heads of other major and minor characters too. I really loved this because it showed how war can affect people in such different positions of life. Through these different perspectives, the novel introduces you to new characters like Ziri and Jael and fleshes out some of the secondary characters from Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I particularly enjoyed reading the perspectives of Liraz and Zuzana, and hope that their perspectives are included in Dreams of Gods and Monsters. 

Days of Blood and Starlight also lacks the insta-love romance that was present in Daughter of Smoke and Bone. In fact, considering how badly he betrayed her, I love that Karou doesn’t forgive Akiva! At the same time though, I love that Taylor leaves open the possibility of redemption for Akiva.

A sequel that definitely doesn’t suffer from the dreaded middle book syndrome, Days of Blood and Starlight was released in November 2012 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Comments About the Cover: I love how everything is in shades of black and white except for the painted mask and the author's name, which therefore really stand out.

Mini Reviews: My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick and Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

From Goodreads: The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not. Loud, messy, affectionate. And every day from her rooftop perch, Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them ... until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs up next to her and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely for each other, stumbling through the awkwardness and awesomeness of first love, Jase's family embraces Samantha - even as she keeps him a secret from her own. Then something unthinkable happens, and the bottom drops out of Samantha's world. She's suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself?

My Rating: 4 hearts 

Thoughts on the Novel: Although the ending felt a bit rushed, I found Huntley Fitzpatrick's My Life Next Door to be a fun read featuring a very cute romance and a family that's easy to fall in love with. The YA novels I read tend to have dysfunctional families or absent parents so it was really nice to see how close-knit the Garretts were. There were eight Garrett children, and Fitzpatrick made each one of them seem like individuals. Jace may be the one I was supposed to swoon over (and I did), but George and Patsy quickly became my favourite Garretts.

My Life Next Door was released by Dial Books For Young Readers in 2012. 
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From Goodreads: 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? 

My Rating: 4.5 hearts 

Thoughts on the Novel: After seeing so much praise for Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, I finally decided to give it a try. Despite a tiny bit of predictability and a romance that had a touch of insta-love, I ended up loving Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I can’t believe I waited so long to read it! The story was absorbing and beautifully written, and the description of Prague and all the places Karou traveled to were incredibly vivid. Taylor’s own fantasy world of Eretz seemed as real a place as her earthly settings because of how well developed it was. I also loved how Taylor managed to make each character important in their own right since none of the secondary characters felt like they were there simply for convenience.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone was released by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2011.