Book Review: Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Title // Author: Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor (web | twitter)
Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone #2
Genre: Fantasy YA
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Publisher: Little, Brown BFYR
Release date: November 6, 2012
Challenge: 2013 TBR Challenge
Source: Own it

Summary: Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.

This is not that world.

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?

DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT by Laini Taylor is–for me–almost without fault. I loved DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE. I thought it was lush and gorgeous and emotional and so imaginative. DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT takes all of that incredible world-building and characters and feelings and makes it MORE. Laini Taylor has solidified my forever love in this series by taking my heart that was already bruised by and for Karou and Akiva, and tearing it up a little bit more. Also, we get a great, in-depth glimpse of the home world of the Seraphim and the Chimera–Eretz–and it was just as expertly wrought as I hoped. DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT is not really a happy book, but it’s still beautiful.

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE, Y’ALL!

So at the end of book 1, we learn that Karou is in fact a revenant–as evidenced by the hamsas on her hands–a new vessel for the soul of Madrigal, a chimera who fell in love with Akiva only to suffer a horrible betrayal and die a brutal death. Akiva, in his desolation and grief, devoted himself to avenging the death of his love by killing those of her own kind he believed responsible, a fact Karou discovers when she and Akiva break her wishbone necklace and her memories as Madrigal come flooding back. Karou leaves Akiva and goes back to Eretz hoping to save the only family she ever knew, leaving Akiva to his broken heart. SIGH. *sobs*

DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT picks up a little after the end of DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE, and Akiva and Karou spend basically all of this book on the outs. It’s both sad and real. Karou, on one of her trips back to Eretz, found what was left of the Chimera from Loramendi–including Thiago, the White Wolf, the spurned, brutal, murderous general of the Chimera armies who had his sights set on Madrigal before she slept with the enemy. He is the one who ordered her death, and now he and the remaining Chimera are living on a deserted Moroccan estate where Karou has been charged with Brimstone’s work: crafting new bodies for the Chimera who are slain during trips into Eretz to rile up the Seraphim, who believe the Chimera to be defeated. It’s a dangerous, tenuous alliance between Thiago and Karou. If you didn’t hate Thiago before, he does little to redeem himself here, which is both terrible and AWESOME.

Speaking of Eretz, I just absolutely ADORED getting to see so much of it in DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT. We see the countryside of the Free Holdings of the Chimera, and we see Astrae, the capital city of the Seraphim Empire. I particularly enjoyed that last bit. The Serpahim are ALL UP IN this book, and I am so glad that Laini Taylor let us spend so much time not just with Akiva but also with his siblings, Liraz and Hazael. We also meet some more baddies–ANGEL BADDIES. The emperor Joram and his horrid brother, Jael, are the WORST. But even though they SUCK, Laini Taylor makes them captivating because she is MAGICAL. I loved to hate them because of all the excellent, twisty, mean things they bring to the story.

Since Karou and Akiva spend most of this book basically hate-swooning each other, Laini Tylor has gifted us with the supreme, heart-melting, adorable pair of Zuzana and Mik. FRIENDS. THESE TWO. I ADORE THEM. They are so stinking cute together! I loved their relationship, and I loved that Zuzana would go to the ends of the Earth for Karou. AHH! I loved this book so much, and Zuzana and Mik were one of my very favorite parts.

Laini Taylor really ups the ante in terms of conflict in DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT as well and friends, to say that I am DYING to see what happens next because the ending of this book BRINGS IT is an understatement. There’s war and death and rebellion and betrayal. I cried and I am left both hopeful and anxious about what is to come for these characters who are so wonderful and complex. The war between the Seraphim and the Chimera is about to get NUTS, friends. In the best way EVER.

Friends, I really can’t express my love of DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT enough. It’s almost 550 pages long and I simultaneously wanted to devour it and draw it out so that I could just exist in that world all the time. Laini Taylor‘s writing is gorgeous and her stories are, as always, dramatic, intense, and complicated. I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the things that happen in this book, the new characters we meet, the new places we see, the potential futures on the horizon. I might seriously commit a crime to read book 3 as close to NOW as possible. Because if DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT is any indication, I’m going to ADORE IT.

Check out these other reviews of Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Meg @ Coffee and Wizards: “I was always happy to be reading it and would have happily continued reading for a couple more hundred pages given the opportunity.”

Magan @ Rather Be Reading: “What a beautiful, wonderful, incredible book by Laini Taylor.”

Asheley @ Into the Hall of Books: “Y’all, I was absolutely taken by this book. I found such JOY in reading it – every single word – even in the death and war and even sorrow.”