Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, September 2011: Karou is a seventeen-year-old art student with a most unusual family. From his desk in a dusty, otherworldly shop, her mysterious, monstrous father sends her on errands across the globe, collecting teeth for a shadowy purpose. On one such errand, Karou encounters an angel, and soon the mysteries of her life and her family are unraveled--with consequences both beautiful and dreadful. National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor has created a lushly imaginative, fully realized world in Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Taylor’s writing is as sumptuous as poetry, and the story overflows with dark and delightful magic, star-crossed love, and difficult choices with heartbreaking repercussions. Readers of all ages will be utterly enchanted. --Juliet Disparte

Review

• "National Book Award finalist Taylor (Lips Touch: Three Times) again weaves a masterful mix of reality and fantasy with cross-genre appeal. Exquisitely written and beautifully paced, the tale is set in ghostly, romantic Prague, where 17-year-old Karou is an art student--except when she is called "home" to do errands for the family of loving, albeit inhuman, creatures who raised her. Mysterious as Karou seems to her friends, her life is equally mysterious to her: How did she come to live with chimaera? Why does paternal Brimstone eternally require teeth--especially human ones? And why is she "plagued by the notion that she wasn't whole....a sensation akin to having forgotten something?" Taylor interlaces cleverly droll depictions of contemporary teenage life with equally believable portrayals of terrifying otherworldly beings. When black handprints begin appearing on doorways throughout the world, Karou is swept into the ancient deadly rivalry between devils and angels and gradually, painfully, acquires her longed-for self-knowledge. The book's final pages seemingly establish the triumph of true love--until a horrifying revelation sets the stage for a second book." (Publishers Weekly, starred review )
  

• "[A]long with writing in such heightened language that even casual banter often comes off as wildly funny, the author crafts a fierce heroine with bright-blue hair, tattoos, martial skills, a growing attachment to a preternaturally hunky but not entirely sane warrior and, in episodes to come, an army of killer angels to confront. Rarely--perhaps not since the author's own Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer (2007)--does a series kick off so deliciously." (Kirkus, starred review )
  

• "Taylor crafts both her world and her romance with meticulous care, building the first on a wealth of thought-provoking details and making the second equal parts tender and antagonistic...Fans of torturously star-crossed lovers a la those in Marr's Wicked Lovely and Black's Tithe will find much to enjoy here, but those who flock to innovative, character-driven fantasy with thematic depth will be equally enthralled." (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review )
  

"Author Taylor has created a variety of worlds, time frames, and creatures with such detail and craft that all are believable...Readers will look forward to the suggested sequel to this complex, exciting tale." (Booklist )

"Wow. I wish I had written this book." (Patrick Rothfuss, author of *The Wise Man's Fear* )

"Daughter of Smoke and Bone is that rare beast: a novel that takes the familiar and makes it appear startling and new. Taylor has embraced the mythology of angels and reworked it in an extraordinary form, so that by the end of this lyrical, haunting book, I wanted to believe in the existence of these violent, tormented beings. I can hardly wait for the next installment." (John Connolly, author of *The Book of Lost Things* )

"Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a lush, sweeping, romantic marvel of a book. Taylor's writing is a revelation, masterfully blending an intricate fantasy world into our own, with an artist's flair for exquisite details. Funny, devastating, delightful, unforgettable. Pure storytelling perfection." (Kiersten White, author of the Paranormalcy series )

From Publishers Weekly

Alternate-history master Turtledove (_Ruled Britannia_) presents a starkly realistic view of what might have been had the Japanese followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor with a land invasion and occupied Hawaii. U.S. airman Fletch Armitage, held in a POW camp under horrifying conditions (the Japanese never signed the Geneva Convention), keeps hope alive even as he slowly starves. His ex-wife, Jane, keeps her head down in occupied Wahiawa, tending her assigned garden plot and hoping she won't be raped. Fisherman Jiro Takahashi, a native Japanese, welcomes the Rising Sun in Hawaii, but his sons, who consider themselves American, aren't so sure, even though the white Americans begin treating Japanese-Americans with contempt, particularly those who act as translators for the invaders, further widening the racial divide and increasing tensions. As the Japanese strengthen their hold on the islands, each side comes to grudgingly accept the courage of the other, despite the cultural chasms that separate them. The Americans vow to retake the islands, setting the scene for a final showdown that pits mastermind Commander Genda and maneuverable Zero airplanes against American strategy that includes technology the Japanese lack: radar. A less than neatly wrapped-up ending leaves room for a sequel. With an emphasis on tactics and warfare technology, this exciting, well-researched alternate history will please history buffs and SF fans alike.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Turtledove's latest twist on history has the Japanese invading Hawaii in December 1941. It recalls most closely Ruled Britannia (2002), except that this book is almost certainly the first volume of another WWII alternate history. The strategic consequences of the U.S. being backed up against its own West Coast, with most of its navy's aircraft carriers sunk, are too extensive to be dealt with in one novel, and one viewpoint character, Joe Crosetti, is training as a naval aviator for the battles to come. But as usual, Turtledove provides an extensive range of characters, civilian and military, of both sides and all ranks. Minoru Genda and Mitsuo Fuchida, both real historical Japanese officers, perform with their expected brilliance. On the other hand, Corporal Shimizu rides ashore in a landing barge and gives a grunt's-eye view of the Japanese army, whose motto is, quite understandably, "Hard work!" U.S. artillery officer Fletcher Armitage and his wife, Jane, were on the verge of divorce when the balloon went up and are now even more thoroughly separated as he labors in a POW camp, and she survives off her turnip patch. Oscar van der Klerk goes from surf bum to amateur spy, and the fishermen of the Takahashi family are divided, father Jiro favoring the Japanese occupiers, and his sons, who considered themselves Americans, disgruntled, to say the least. Demanding, irresistible, and magisterial--to say the very least. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Publishers Weekly

The human price of war, regardless of nationality, is the relentless focus of this chilling sequel to Turtledove's alternative history Days of Infamy (2004), in which the Japanese conquer Hawaii after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Times are hard for Americans under the occupation. Scarce food and resources result in privation and a thriving black market. Japanese soldiers work POWs to death with heavy labor on insufficient rations. Women are forced into prostitution as comfort women. But the U.S. armed forces have a few tricks up their sleeve, notably a new kind of aircraft that can hold its own against the Zero. Both the Japanese and American militaries scheme, plan and train, while surfer bums, POWs and fishermen just try to get by. A plethora of characters, each with his or her own point of view, provide experiences in miniature that combine to paint a broad canvas of the titanic struggle, if at the cost of a fragmented narrative.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The Japanese occupation of Hawaii after Pearl Harbor has delayed the U.S. cross-Pacific offensive for two years. But it is coming, with Joe Crossetti as part of the spearhead, piloting a Hellcat off of the new carrier Bunker Hill. Marine Sergeant Leo Dillon and his platoon aren't far behind. Meanwhile, the Japanese in the islands know they are in a logistically impossible situation and outnumbered, to boot. Some, like Minoru Genda and Mitsuo Fughida, do their best to continue the fight. Other Japanese seem to spend most of their time making Americans miserable. Fletcher Armitage is building a tunnel under slave-labor conditions, while his estranged wife, Jane, has been forced into being a comfort girl. Jiro Takahashi is profoundly embarrassing his Americanized and loyal sons by making propaganda broadcasts for the occupation authorities. And Oscar van der Klerk hopes that if he catches enough fish and keeps his head down, both he and Susie Higgins will survive the high-intensity combat that wrecks Honolulu in the second half of the book. An able continuation of the outstanding exploration of the unpleasant WWII alternate scenario that Turtledove launched in Days of Infamy (2004). Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved