Stealing Ideas?

Gary Gibson
STEALING LIGHT

Heinlein was a nutter.

Iain Banks is the best.

That's what I learned from this book.

Trouble is, I already knew Heinlein was crazy and Banks single handedly saved hard SF from extinction.

The main problem I had with this book is that it kept making me think about other SF authors' works instead of Gibson's own. Let me explain...

There's a society based on an updated version of Spartan principles, which plays a central role in the story. It's not portrayed in an at all favourable light. This can't be seen as anything other than a response to Heinlein's Starship Troopers where-in a society based on an updated version of Spartan principles is portrayed as some kind of ideal in all apparent seriousness.

There's a part where a character quotes T.S.Eliot at a critical moment...the same quote as gives Iain M. Banks' first book its name. There are also aliens with stupid jokes for names...

Ever since the warped but wittily named Minds of Banks' Culture burst onto the scene, other authors of space opera have been copying the idea with no success, whether they be naming starships, robots or aliens...

There are also obvious thematic links to Alastair Reynolds and the Alien films, or at least the first one.

So here's what all this amounts to; all books have antecedents, all authors have conscious or unconscious influences, but if, as a writer, you fail to mix up all your influences with enough of your own ideas or atmosphere, your readers will fail to credit you with the results.

If you write a direct counter-argument to another book, that book will distract readers who have read it - unless enough else is going on for it to only emerge afterward. If you make obvious reference, for no good reason, to another author, during a climactic scene, the reader of both writers will be distracted from the action at a critical moment.

One reason this is so distracting is that Gibson failed to engage my sympathies early - it must have been half way through a 600p book before I began to care about the main protagonist. Another is that too much is given away early - indeed in the back cover blurb, for that matter. Whilst there were late surprises, most of the general outline of what is going on is given away by clumsy foreshadowing.

I have the feeling Gibson could get better if he pays attention to his weaknesses and works to improve but that hasn't really happened for Peter F. Hamilton, whose multi-tome space operas are not really as good as Gibson's - on the evidence of just this first volume, anyway.

The second half of this book is quite good, from a thriller perspective and I will grant Gibson this; whilst mind-computer interfacing plays an important role in this story, it isn't what it's about, which is a huge relief, because,"Look how cool my imagined gadgets are!" feels nigh ubiquitous and really boring nowadays, as an SF theme.

Instead, Gibson is talking politics and human nature - which has been an SF theme from the birth of the genre, really. But it's more interesting and vaster in scope than, "Wheee! Bio-electronics!" He's also saying something that is a direct counter to much of the aliens-vs.-humans SF of the Cold War era. Or he might be - because now that vol.1 is out the way, a less predictable situation has been set up and he's made me interested enough to tackle vol.2 - despite my nearly quiting at p200.

So if you stick with it, you might like this one - or if you aren't a jaded SF reader, you might too, or if you just don't care about that stuff and want a 'friller, maybe this is a reasonable choice - but you'd probably like Neal Asher better in the lattermost case.

Fantastical Gothic Comedy Mystery with Corpses, a Castle, a Creature and a Raven your thing? Read the Raven Mysteries!

FLOOD AND FANG
Marcus Sedgwick

Marcus Sedgwick aims for a younger audience with this, the first of five Raven Mysteries books.  Instead he gets me.

The ancient Guardian of Otherhand Castle has noticed a threat to the family and servants of the castle - a menacing and noxious tail, that may be connected to a mouth connected to the disappearance of a kitchen maid.  Soon he has observed another danger: the castle, which appears to have something of a mind of its own, is flooding.  Being a responsible Guardian, he attempts to warn the Otherhands, but this is more difficult than it would initially seem, since the Otherhands are variously, mad, stupid, obsessed with trivialities, conducting gruesome meteorological experiments or accompanied by a dangerous sticky monkey.  Even explaining the situation to the one sensible member of the Otherhand clan is not straightforward, because the ancient Guardian is a Raven.  Called Edgar.

This immensely entertaining, funny book combines ingredients from every comic-Gothic source that comes to mind, including The Adams Family, Beetlejuice and Araminta Spook with items from numerous more serious Gothic sources such as Gormenghast and one E.A. Poe, mixed together with Sedgwick's own strong Gothic sensibility and baked in a slightly rusty cake tin, rising to form a light and fluffy cake that it is a delight to consume.

It is worth noting that the book deploys illustration more effectively than any other novel with a similar target audience that I can remember.  (Admittedly I can remember few.)

I look forward impatiently to the next Mystery as told from the viewpoint of Otherhand's oldest denizen, Edgar the Raven.

Also seen at: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/48711126

“Isn't it funny how we live inside the lies we believe?”

Please Ignore Vera Dietz
A.S. King
Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Reader, 2010

Reviewed by Sesana
4 out of 5 stars

Is it okay to hate a dead kid? Even if you loved him once? Even if he was my best friend? Is it okay to hate him for being dead?

Charlie is dead. Vera was his best friend, until she wasn't anymore. She loved him, until she hated him. Until he turned his back on her. And now he's dead, and she knows more than she's told about how Charlie died. But she's paralyzed by her complicated feelings of love and hate towards Charlie, by her own guilt about what she did and didn't do before he died, and by a lifetime of being told not to get involved.

Vera broke my heart. It wasn't just everything that she goes through over the course of the book (and does she ever go through a lot), it was her almost desperate need to ignore her conflicted emotions. Ignore, don't get involved, move on. And we see enough of her history to see how and why she got this way. But I didn't just feel for her. I felt for her father, unable to fully deal with being left by Vera's mother, haunted by his own alcoholism and the fear of Vera being just like him, and ill-equipped to love or show love. I felt for Charlie, horrible as he can be at times, because I can see how little prepared he was to make any better choices.

I think that's the strength of King here, that her characters are real and sympathetic and have fully believable voices. But the resolutions that do come can be a little neat. Vera's drinking problem is solved rather too easily, as is the relationship with her father. I was able to read that as steps in the right direction, and not as the final say on the situation, but that could have used more clarification.

Still, though I didn't love this book unreservedly, King did make me ache for her characters. Her treatment of grief and the complicated, conflicting emotions it can bring up was one of the most realistic I've read in a long time. And I will remember it, and especially Vera, for even longer.  

A Duane Swierczynski Triple Bill!

Good evening folks!

Good 'ol bearded Brandon here with a triple header of reviews for you on this lovely Saturday night.  Seeing as there isn't hockey to occupy my attention, I thought I would give you an action packed post all regarding books featuring hooligans mucking it up on the Streets of Philadelphia.  (**Editors Note** not one of these characters will be portrayed by Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington or Bruce Springsteen)

If you ever find yourself over on my blog - Every Read Thing [cheap plug] - you'll know that I'm a pretty big fan of one, Duane Swierczynski.  Swierczynski is one of those authors who does not appear to be happy when confined in one specific story telling medium.  He's both a fiction and non-fiction writer who has also tried his hand at comic books.  Tonight however, I'm going to give you three reviews for three of his pulp style novels.  While they're not officially connected within a series, there are a few characters that find themselves carrying over into each novel.

Stephen King shows off his feminist side

Gerald's Game
Stephen King
Viking, 1992

Reviewer: Trudi
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I've re-read Gerald's Game several times since its 1992 publication, and have just finished listening to it as an audiobook. Here's what I know for sure:

1) this story has lost none of its power over me, despite the fact I know everything that's going to happen (quite an impressive feat for a largely plot-driven suspense piece).

2) it is without question, one of King's most underrated, overlooked novels. As of this writing its Goodreads rating is 3.35. Keeping it company in the basement is the much maligned Tommyknockers (incidentally another favorite of mine) and From a Buick 8 (3.32 but as this is my least favorite King novel I tend to agree with that number).

3) finally, if you aren't already a raving fan of this book I'm not going to change your mind. That's fair. We can't all love the same thing, especially when it comes to books. What I hope I can do is capture just a smidge the reasons why -- if you haven't yet -- you must give this book a chance.

For a lot of King's Constant Readers, Gerald's Game will always be linked to its sister novel -- Dolores Claiborne -- as both books were released the same year and King meant them to be companion novels to one another. Their narratives are cleverly linked by a solar eclipse. As a literary device it is an interesting one, but for me it isn't what makes these novels so special or spectacular. In fact, you could remove that connection and neither novel would suffer from its absence. No, what makes each novel memorable is the writing, the characterization and most of all, King's sheer balls to the wall commitment to the delivery of the story and its outcome.

As companion novels, there are some notable similarities; namely, the exploration of female abuse at the hands of male aggressors. There are painful descriptions of domestic battery and sexual molestation. King bravely (and quite successfully I would argue) enters the terrain of victim humiliation, degradation, and the lingering psychological effects such acts guarantee. In many ways, these are King's most feminist novels and I don't think it a coincidence that Gerald's Game is dedicated to his wife Tabitha and her five sisters.

Yet for me, this isn't what defines Gerald's Game which I would argue has much more in common with Misery, King's Bachman novel The Long Walk, and his short story "Survivor Type". I say this because in all of these what King is really doing is looking at the human body under brutalizing physical duress... at the body in extremis and what humans are genetically hardwired to do to survive and go on living another day. Excruciating physical peril undeniably comes with a psychological component and no one writes that better than King using his own heady and addictive brew of storytelling.

Jessie Burlingame -- our "damsel" in distress -- is facing certain death. She is trapped, chained in handcuffs to the bed she shares with her husband Gerald in their summer house on the lake. But it's not summer. It's fall, and the lake is empty. Everyone has gone home. There is no one to hear her scream or beg for release.

One of the reasons I love Gerald's Game so much is the "solve the puzzle" locked room mystery of it. It's like one of those brain teasers (you know the one about the melted icicle?) In this case, you have one woman handcuffed to a bed. How do you get her out of them (playing fair, no tricks, no deus ex machina). How will she suffer? What demands will be placed on her body, on her mind? This is where King shines. One of my favorite scenes from the entire novel is Jessie's quest for the glass of water resting on the bed's headboard. It is such agonizing suspense I almost couldn't stand it. I was in those handcuffs too, you see, thirsty, exhausted and in pain. Sheer mastery of the craft I tell you. It would have had Hitchcock foaming at the mouth to film it. [One of my favorite scenes from the entire novel is Jessie's quest for the glass of water resting on the bed's headboard. It is agonizing suspense I almost couldn't stand it. Sheer mastery of the craft I tell you. It would have had Hitchcock foaming at the mouth to film it. (hide spoiler)]

In telling Jessie's story King uncovers all the nitty-gritty minutia of human physical suffering and the desperation of one woman's attempt to end it. How far is any one person willing to go to keep on taking his or her next breath? Stephen King knows pretty damn far. Just ask Paul Sheldon or Ray Garraty. Or the castaway in "Survivor Type" -- him most of all. King also knows that the human body has an amazing capacity for trauma. It can withstand a lot -- so much so that the mind often breaks first.

King being King, it's not just enough to have Jessie at the mercy of handcuffs she can't merely wiggle out of. No, King being King, he introduces several other elements to the story to amp up the suspense and terror. Some may argue the story didn't need these elements (one element in particular), but I say Bravo! Those who have read the novel know what I'm talking about -- woof! woof! and "some people call me a Space Cowboy" is all I'm going to say about that. [Our first introduction to the "Space Cowboy" -- There was a man in the room -- nearly caused me to faint from pure shock. I was in those handcuffs too, you see, in the dark, thirsty, exhausted and in pain. The sudden realization that I may not be alone after all, that there may be someone lurking in a dark shadow of the room watching me.... shiver.

I love how long King is able to prolong the suspense over this creature's existence -- is it or is it not a figment of Jessie's overtaxed imagination? I went back and forth several times during the last part of the novel, until finally the big reveal and I was satisfied, more than satisfied actually. The fact that he turned out to be real after all made my skin crawl. (hide spoiler)]

On the Goodreads Stephen King Fans discussion forum, a wonderful comment was made that really sums up the intensity of this novel for me, and its overwhelming, lingering appeal:

[Gerald's Game] goes straight to the oldest, reptilian part of the human brain: fight or flight -- but here, flight's out of the question. This is true horror -- helplessness.

This novel is burned into my brain as if I've lived it. That's unforgettable storytelling and something you don't want to miss. Trust me. You do trust me, don't you?

This review is also posted to Goodreads.

Would you live your current life over again?

Life After Life
By Kate Akinson
Reviewed by Stephanie
5 stars out of 5


“What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?”

Would it?

I believe everyone would love a chance to go back and change things in their past.    Correct mistakes in order to change their life or their loved ones lives for the better.   But changing one thing may only lead to a new problem……then you have to go back, change the first mistake, then the second one, and so on.  I don’t know about you, but this sounds exhausting to me.

Ursula gets the chance to get it ‘right’ over and over again.  She is born on a snowy night in February 1910, but since she is born with no doctor present, and with the umbilical cord around her neck she never breaths a breath.  Ursula is born on a snowy night in February 1910; the doctor makes it in time to save the little girl from nearly straggling on her own umbilical cord.  Through it all, Ursula lives many lives and dies many deaths.  Each time she is reborn in the same life, same date, same circumstances but each time she has a certain amount of recall from former times around and she is able to make choices to avoid catastrophe….but  new catastrophes, and new deaths,  always crop up and they need a fixing the next time around.

Every time she made the right decision and avoided some horrible fate it I would be so happy and I’d hope that maybe this time would be the last time for Ursula, that she would finally get to rest (even though I didn’t  want the book to end), but no, there was always the snow.

This book is just beautiful.  Painstakingly researched and sublimely written, Life After Life has found a place on my Favorites shelf.  Kate Atkinson wrote about life in WWII England and  in WWII Germany in such a human way that I don’t believe I ever really felt, or understood, what it was truly like until I read this book.  What it was like to live with the threat of being bombed every single night, horrifying.  Or what it was like to live under the rule of a crazy man, loving him and worshiping him as the savior of your country only to realize, too late, who he really was.

I love this book and this quote that I hate to admit hits a little too close to home.

“Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn't even begin to solve.”

The Gates

John Connolly
Hodder & Stoughton
Reviewed by: Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Young Samuel Johnson and his dachshund, Boswell, are trying to show initiative by trick-or-treating a full three days before Halloween which is how they come to witness strange goings-on at 666 Crowley Road. The Abernathys don't mean any harm by their flirtation with the underworld, but when they unknowingly call forth Satan himself, they create a gap in the universe. A gap in which a pair of enormous gates is visible. The gates to Hell. And there are some pretty terrifying beings just itching to get out...

Can one small boy defeat evil? Can he harness the power of science, faith, and love to save the world as we know it?

Bursting with imagination, The Gates is about the pull between good and evil, physics and fantasy. It is about a quirky and eccentric boy who is impossible not to love, and the unlikely cast of characters who give him the strength to stand up to a demonic power.

John Connolly manages to re-create the magical and scary world of childhood that we've all left behind but so love to visit. And for those of you who thought you knew everything you could about particle physics and the universe, think again. This novel makes anything seem possible.

My Review

I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy nearly 30 years ago and don’t remember finding it all that funny. I also never cared for Monty Python. Maybe it’s the British humor I don’t get, but Fawlty Towers cracks me up, no matter how many times I see each episode. Humor is such a personal thing, and sometimes I just don’t see humor in things others find funny. And other times I laugh hysterically at things people don’t understand. So I’m cautious about the humorous fiction I read, mostly preferring titles that are unexpectedly funny rather than those which claim to be funny.

I wasn’t too sure I wanted to read The Gates, particularly after reading a few reviews claiming it was laugh-out-loud funny, but I’ve heard many good things about the author, so I thought I’d give it a try.

This story takes place in a small town in England. 11-year-old Samuel Johnson and his dachshund, Boswell, witness their neighbors summoning strange beings though a small, glowing hole in their basement. Meanwhile, two scientists in Switzerland in the middle of a Battleship game are bewildered by a rotten egg smell and a bit of energy that escaped from a particle accelerator. Together, these events have freed all kinds of nasty beings intent on destroying the world. It is up to Samuel to stop them, that’s if anyone would believe him.

The physics stuff in the beginning slowed me down a little, but I thoroughly enjoyed the quirky characters, the nasty demons, and the banished demon, Nurd, who becomes Samuel’s unlikely ally. I loved the fantasy and horror elements, the lighthearted humor, and the enlightening footnotes.

This is a fun story that I’d recommend to young and old alike.

Also posted at Goodreads

Larry Watson's Amazing Bentrock, Montana, Stories

MONTANA 1948
Larry Watson
Milkweed Editions
$14.00 trade paper, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The events of that small-town summer forever alter David Hayden's view of his family: his self-effacing father, a sheriff who never wears his badge; his clear sighted mother; his uncle, a charming war hero and respected doctor; and the Hayden's lively, statuesque Sioux housekeeper, Marie Little Soldier, whose revelations are at the heart of the story. It is a tale of love and courage, of power abused, and of the terrible choice between family loyalty and justice.

My Review: Another one I'd give six stars to if I could.

This book has a deeply personal connection to me and my life. I have given many copies of this book away, because of its role in helping me through a horrible emotional crisis of a year. I was given heart, comfort, and guidance by this work of fiction, such as no corporeal person could have given me.

But to consider this as a book, a novel written for an audience by a writer, is to appreciate anew the benefits of craftsmanship and the ungovernable lightning of talent. There are very few books I can give the accolade of "I wouldn't change a single thing" to, and this is one of them. Not one word out of place, not one simile or metaphor ill-used, unused, or overused, nothing could be added without compromising the beauty of the book, and nothing need be removed to clear aside clutter.

If brevity is the soul of wit, it is also the soul of wisdom, and this book is wise, so wise, to its child narrator's painful coming to adulthood. It's also wise to the nature of love as lived from day to day, and how it so often can curdle into acceptance of what one cannot change...but should, or should always strive to, because some things are simply, inarguably, Right.

As a meditation on one's remembered past, this is a crystal clear and unsparing récit; as a story, it's so simple as to be mindless, except that it's mindful of the role of unadorned narrative in making the world a better place.

I would like to know the characters in this novel, really know them, sit in their kitchens and listen to their stories and drink their vile percolated coffee. I loved each of them, yes even the one whose bad deeds set the story in motion, loved them for being real and nuanced and far more vulnerable than most of the real people I know.

I can't recommend this book to you, because it's very strong meat; I can encourage you to read it if you care for justice, the horrible cost of it and the terrifying price it exacts from those it visits; but you will come away from it changed, as I was, possibly for the better but changed. Don't ever ask questions you don't want the answers to...and this book answers some very, very nasty questions with grace and beauty and forgiveness.

==============================================================================================================================================


JUSTICE
Larry Watson
Milkweed Editions
$15.00 trade paper, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Larry Watson's bestselling novel Montana 1948 was acclaimed as "a work of art" (Susan Petro, San Francisco Chronicle), a prize-winning evocation of a time, a place, and a family. Now Watson returns to Montana 1948's vast landscape with a stunning prequel that illuminates the Hayden clan's early years and the circumstances that led to the events of Montana 1948.

In Montana, the Hayden name is law. For the Hayden boys, Wesley and Frank, their legacy carries an aura of privilege and power that doesn't stop at the Montana border, even when an ill-fated hunting trip makes them temporary outlaws. But what it means to bear the name is something each generation must discover for itself. From Julian, the hard-bitten and blustery patriarch, to Gail, Sheriff Wesley Hayden's spirited wife and moral compass, Larry Watson gives breath and blood to a remarkable family's struggles and rewards, and opens an evocative window on the very heart of the American West.

My Review: A collection of previously published short pieces, Justice tells the backstory of the Haydens of Bentrock, Montana, the family at the center of Watson's one bestselling novel Montana 1948. We meet patriarch Julian Hayden in 1899, barely dry behind the ears and ready to take on the world; his shy, retiring, high-strung wife Enid on the day she married him; his two sons on the day childhood ended for both, in which the seeds of Montana 1948 are explicitly sown; Wesley's short, abortive run for freedom from the weight of expectations sparks at a terrible family Thanksgiving dinner; Julian's and Wesley's deputy and general sad-sack, Len McAuley, comes in from the pointlessness of secondary characterization in unexpected and poignant ways; and then the marriage and parenthood of North Dakotan steel magnolia Gail and Wesley, a life started in, and blighted by, the shadows of the Hayden family legacy.

This is decidedly not Montana 1948. It's perfectly good read on its own, actually, just as character sketches of a family and its effects on the world at large, and its costs to the members thereof. I can't complain about anything here, because Dr. Watson is a prose stylist whose direct, pared down artistry is very appealing to me. I can't urge all and sundry to rush out and buy a copy, either, because the book is a collection of short stories with all the cultural freight implicit in that description. Tastes and hints and pieces are the stuff of short stories, and that is both a strength and a weakness. Here, it's perfect, because the novel they prequelize (a rather lumpish and ungainly neologism, but "prefigure" is so stuffily snooty) is in itself a marvel of tight, concise storytelling that leaves acres of room to wonder about the people in it. But on its own, under its own steam, it's very good but not great. Good writing, interesting characters, but nothing...well, nothing to launch it to that next level, say like American Salvage or Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.

Still. You have definitely done worse by yourself than reading these seven stories. I'm glad I finally made room for them on the nightstand. Recommended.

Three Parts Dead . . . And Four Parts Awesome

Three Parts Dead

by Max Gladstone

Published by Tor Books

4 Out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Amanda

When your god has died, who ya gonna call? Why, the thaumaturgical firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, of course.

At least that's what the priesthood of Alt Coulumb does when their fire deity, Kos, snuffs it (a rather embarrassing turn of events for a god billed as "Kos the Everburning"). Without his power driving the steam engines of the city, Alt Coulumb will eventually come to a grinding halt, so it is up to Tara Abernathy (the newest recruit of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao) to unravel the circumstances surrounding the death of Kos and determine if there is enough of the deity left to resurrect a remnant of his power to keep Alt Coulumb moving. To complicate matters, Tara suspects that Kos did not just die--he was murdered.

Welcome to Three Parts Dead, a novel set in an unclear time and an unclear place populated by Stone Men (gargoyles that can shift into human form), vampire pirates, Justice personified, fallen gods, deified humans and all other manner of weird and wonderful things held together by the Craft, the magic of starlight and earth wielded by Craftspeople like Tara. It's a world where gods use their power to barter with other cities and other gods, and where the death of one god can leave the whole world in a precarious position indeed. It's also a world still feeling the effects of the God Wars, a war between gods and Craftspeople that took place decades before and led to deep distrust between religious factions and practitioners of the Craft. All of this creates a complex mythology and political structure that hopefully author Max Gladstone has just begun to dip into as there's enough at work here to keep a well-written series going for several more books.

Gladstone's inventiveness is impressive and, despite a sometimes baroque attention to detail, the narrative never gets bogged down and moves along at a brusque pace. Unlike many fantasy novels, he largely avoids the "infodump" in favor of just dunking your ass into the deep end of the pool and seeing if you can swim, a method of storytelling I much prefer as it allows the reader to assimilate himself while exploring the world Gladstone has created.

If I have one complaint with the novel, it's that there is a lot going on, with a lot of people involved, and all at a breakneck speed. Frankly, I could have done with 50 more pages if it would have slowed things down a bit as a ridiculous amount of narrative happens in the span of what is apparently two days.  While the villain is a little obvious, the creative manner in which the antagonist is discovered and dealt with more than makes up for it.

Overall, this was one weird little ride that I enjoyed the hell out of--so much so that his next book, Two Serpents Rise, is already on my pre-order list.

"Once Upon a Time, an Angel and a Devil Fell in Love. It Did Not End Well."

Daughter of Smoke & Bone

by Laini Taylor

Published by Little, Brown Book for Young Readers

4 Out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Amanda

Sometimes I think that I should start a young adult shelf in my house just in case I decide to have kids. Then I'll have all of this amazing novels waiting for them, like gleaming gems plucked out of the murky waters of young adult literature. The Hunger Games will be there, as will the Chaos Walking series, The Dust of 100 Dogs, and now I think I'll toss Daughter of Smoke and Bone onto that imaginary shelf as well. (This shelf is likely to remain imaginary as I'll probably spawn only illiterates or, worse yet, Valley Girl types who, like, soooo totally want to know where the Twilight books are.)

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a unique fantasy with a quirky, blue haired main character named Karou. Karou is an art student living in Prague where she is surrounded by musicians, artists, and actors--all delightful Bohemian types who live to create and entertain. However, Karou's friends are often frustrated by her mysterious disappearances and her evasiveness about her family and past. We soon discover that Karou has a reason for her caginess about truth--she was raised by monsters. Chimera, to be more exact, who inhabit a portal between our world and another. Karou was raised by Brimstone, the part man, part lion, part crocodile, part ram "wishmonger" who trades wishes for teeth. What he does with the teeth and why he's willing to pay such a high price remains a mystery as not even Karou is trusted with this secret. As black handprints appear on the doorways Karou uses to travel the world in search of Brimstone's precious teeth and sightings of angelic beings with wings of fire are reported, Karou begins to unravel the secrets of her origins and her role in the battle for another world.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is elegantly written, far from formulaic, and embraces the outcasts among us. It's obvious that Laini Taylor took her time with crafting this story and draws upon a variety of cultural sources (as well as her own imagination) to create a world unlike any other. Karou is a kick ass heroine, able to take care of herself in volatile situations, but there's still a recognizable and flawed human beneath the tough veneer. The story of the war between the chimera and the angels is also compelling and I'm anxious for the second book as I hope the focus shifts more to this alternate reality.

The first half of the novel immediately drew me in and maintained a brusque pace. However, after the arrival of the angel Akiva, the narrative slows down somewhat as we have the inevitable "love at first sight" plot device that no young adult novel with a female protagonist can do without. And now, a quick rant: seriously, why can't we hold off on the romantic entanglements until the second or third book of a series? Why can't we develop a female character who doesn't have an immediate choice to make between two male characters who are foils for one another? Why must we always be presented with the amazingly talented, self-reliant, strong woman who turns out to be a quivering damsel in distress underneath all the aforementioned bad-assedness? Or, better yet, why can't she meet the potential love interest in the first novel and get to know him before giving her heart to him in the sequel? Young adult writers of the world, hear me! Give us a woman who proves she doesn't need a man by taking the time to convince us she's powerful, strong, and independent by letting her carry a novel all by her little ol' lonesome before we bring in the inevitable love interest.

So, anyhoo, I freely admit to much eye-rolling and muttering of "you've got to be shitting me" during this part of the book. Of course Akiva is unbelievably beautiful (although thank the heavens that he doesn't sparkle) and spiritually broken because of a past love-gone-wrong. But he begins to hope again when he meets Karou. I was ready to mark the book down to a 2 1/2 star based upon that alone. However, I will say this--at least Taylor later provides a reason for the love at first sight scenario that allowed me to give her a pass (although I still think a little less time could have been spent rhapsodizing about Akiva's beauty).

All in all, with the exception of the blossoming romance bit, I really loved this book. It has it all: gorgeous description, exotic locations, believable characters, humor, and some of the best world-building I've seen in a young adult fantasy.