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| Author: Laini Taylor Rating: 5/5 stars. Genre: Urban Fantasy / YA / Paranormal Published September 27th 2011 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers |
"Around the world, black hand prints 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 grows dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly 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 beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery 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?"
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“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.”
Has it ever crossed your mind that there might be a parallel universe to ours? One where angels and demons exist, where once upon a time magic was the core of their existence? Where power and hunger for control turned the most delicate souls into monsters? Turned angels into hunters, killer soldiers? In this book - first one in a trilogy - Laini Taylor brought said hypothetical theory to life; and oh sweet lord did she do an amazing job with that; I did not see that load of imagination coming at me.
Raised half in our world, half in “Elsewhere”, Karou has managed to keep her two lives balanced. In our world, she’s a seventeen year old art student in Prague. In Elsewhere, she’s the human girl who runs errands to a monstrous creature -
Twice per week, she receives a note from Brimstone – the man, chimera who raised her – that says: “Errand requiring immediate attention.” and Karou always goes whenever he calls; though he never says Please.
Brimstone’s dark work; buying all kind of teeth from hunters and murderers, she never understood the reason behind it, nor who she is or she came into his keeping. Her past is a mystery, a question always dismissed whenever it comes up.
Our story begins spiraling to action when around the world, the doors that lead to Elsewhere are being branded and shut, trapping her on the other side of the only family she knows. What she doesn't know is that it would lead her to discover her past.
Reading this book was like being thrown right into the middle of a piece of art, a master piece of colors, life and magic, it was stunning. Laini Taylor’s writing is extremely poetic, rich, divine and very extraordinarily bizarre; her words are the kind that doesn’t take that long to reach the deepest place in your heart. The world she put onto those 420 pages was so mind blowing, it took me to an entirely different place in my mind and I found myself soaring, happily, between the pages.
She used weird names for her characters, she brought to life myths long forgotten and she took me to a new place in the world that I’ve never thought wanted to visit one day; now I do.
How beautiful is that? I mean, that’s just exquisite.
From the first page, I immediately loved Karou with her blue hair, confident, artistic, spunky and completely out of the ordinary character. The way she looked at the worlds she lives in through her art and how she put her heart into everything she does. She’s definitely become one of my absolute favorite female protagonists.
Akiva , this man just skyrocketed to the top of my favorite-male-characters list in just a few pages. Badass, strong, drop-dead-gorgeous, from the first time he showed up, my heart went out to him, you could see a tortured soul behind those tiger eyes of his; turning himself into a brutal, soulless monster, hidden behind the mask of vengeance. I kept asking myself the same question Karou asked herself: “What could’ve possibly happened to this beautiful creature to rip his soul out of him like that?” And oh boy when I found out, it was one of those moments where I needed to just curl on myself and weep. Weep for this ethereal being, tortured man, broken and in pain from years of grief and mourning.
Reading this book was like being thrown right into the middle of a piece of art, a master piece of colors, life and magic, it was stunning. Laini Taylor’s writing is extremely poetic, rich, divine and very extraordinarily bizarre; her words are the kind that doesn’t take that long to reach the deepest place in your heart. The world she put onto those 420 pages was so mind blowing, it took me to an entirely different place in my mind and I found myself soaring, happily, between the pages.
She used weird names for her characters, she brought to life myths long forgotten and she took me to a new place in the world that I’ve never thought wanted to visit one day; now I do.
“The streets of Prague were a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century—or the twentieth or nineteenth, for that matter. It was a city of alchemists and dreamers, its medieval cobbles once trod by golems, mystics, invading armies. Tall houses glowed goldenrod and carmine and eggshell blue, embellished with Rococo plasterwork and capped in roofs of uniform red. Baroque cupolas were the soft green of antique copper, and Gothic steeples stood ready to impale fallen angels. The wind carried the memory of magic, revolution, violins, and the cobbled lanes meandered like creeks. Thugs wore Motzart wigs and pushed chamber music on street corners, and marionettes hung in windows, making the whole city seem like a theater with unseen puppeteers crouched behind velvet.”
How beautiful is that? I mean, that’s just exquisite.
From the first page, I immediately loved Karou with her blue hair, confident, artistic, spunky and completely out of the ordinary character. The way she looked at the worlds she lives in through her art and how she put her heart into everything she does. She’s definitely become one of my absolute favorite female protagonists.
Akiva , this man just skyrocketed to the top of my favorite-male-characters list in just a few pages. Badass, strong, drop-dead-gorgeous, from the first time he showed up, my heart went out to him, you could see a tortured soul behind those tiger eyes of his; turning himself into a brutal, soulless monster, hidden behind the mask of vengeance. I kept asking myself the same question Karou asked herself: “What could’ve possibly happened to this beautiful creature to rip his soul out of him like that?” And oh boy when I found out, it was one of those moments where I needed to just curl on myself and weep. Weep for this ethereal being, tortured man, broken and in pain from years of grief and mourning.
Brimstone , the father figure, I loved that man. I really did, he’s the kind that makes you feel safe, loved while throwing you right in the middle of danger; if that makes any sense.
Zusana , this girl was a fierce soul; besties-for-life-goal kind of girl. She never takes no for an answer and never stands down from a fight; such a ballsy girl for her tiny - marionette - size. I loved how she reacted to Karou telling her the truth about her worlds, how she totally accepted it and acted on it like it was the normal thing for past years. I can’t wait to get to read more of her.
Laini Taylor’s story was like violin music, filled with raw emotions, that flows out of the pages right into your heart. I loved how she didn’t just write the story about love, but it was about hope as well. Hope for a better world, a better future; one where every kind of being gets to live peacefully. The myths she created for every world, the quotes she put on every chapters separated, each told an entirely different magical story and I just loved drowning in them. The out-of-the-box characters she created - Issa, Twiga, Kishmish, Yasri and even Hazael and Liraz.
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