Book Review: Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Rating: 7/10 

Overview: Days of Blood and Starlight is the second book in Laini Taylor's trilogy, which tells of an endless war between the angels and the chimaera. The first book, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, introduced us to Karou, a blue-haired girl who turns out to be much more than a girl, and Akiva, an angel soldier who falls in love with her despite everything he was raised to believe. (Find my book review for Daughter of Smoke and Bone here.) In Days of Blood and Starlight, the weight of so much hatred between their people has finally cracked the bond between Karou and Akiva, and now both struggle to find their place in a war they want no part of. With each grisly task they perform, supposedly for the good of their people, they find the truth has been kept from both of them, in more ways than one. 

As a Reader: Taylor totally pulled me in with Daughter of Smoke and Bone, so I had high expectations for Days of Blood and Starlight. As you can probably tell from my rating, it didn't disappoint. The mastery of language is just so beautiful. The best way I can describe how Taylor strings these eloquent sentences together is with one word: smooth. Reading her work just makes my eyes and my brain happy, like watching one of those oddly satisfying videos where people cut through play-doh with a steak knife. The story did feel a little slow toward the middle, but by then, I was already so invested in the characters that the plot could have crashed and burned and I would have kept reading just to see which of my favorites survived until the end of the book. (Oh spoiler, sorry. A lot of people die. It's a war story, what did you expect?) One of my favorite things that Taylor does with her story is to switch perspectives, all the time, and without warning. There is literally no pattern, or at least none I can see. You might get one chapter from Karou's perspective, then three from Akiva, then two from secondary characters, then back to Akiva, etc. It really helped with the pacing to see how different events looked through the eyes of different characters. It also helped me care more about characters who didn't initially seem essential to the story but ended up having a big part to play that depended mostly on how emotionally attached I had become by that point. 

As a Writer: Again, the language was beautiful. I could NEVER write like this. It's basically poetry in epic fantasy form. Aside from being a word goddess, Taylor also did an awesome job mixing in everything from little twists to life-altering reveals that made me whisper oh heck no into my Kindle. There's nothing more refreshing than a good twist to keep the reader's attention, and Taylor's timing was just perfect. There were only two things about this book that made me pause and wonder how I might approach them differently in my own writing. First, the book's complexity. At times it just seemed like there was so much going on, that as a reader, I felt a little lost. A character would reference something I just didn't remember happening, or toss out a handful of names that I couldn't match to their respective characters. If I'm reading and have to stop to say wait, who is that again, it's a problem. I know it's a small one, and probably one that's hard to fix. There's always going to be a confused reader somewhere who just can't keep all the geographical locations of your fantasy world straight in their head. So don't try to make your writing impossible to confuse, because that's literally NOT possible. Basically, every time I got lost while reading Days of Blood and Starlight, it was a little reminder to always try to be as clear as I could, and maybe re-explain without over-explaining. A tricky balance, but hey, who ever said writing was easy? My second concern was the ending, and if you read my review for Daughter of Smoke and Bone, you'll see that I already talked about this a bit. In the previous book, and in Days of Blood and Starlight, the endings were wonderful, but they just didn't leave me with the absolute, heart-stopping need to read the next book in the series. Again, this isn't a huge issue, but it makes me wonder what I could do to my own series to make people crazy for the next book. The first and most obvious answer that pops into my head is a good old fashioned cliff hanger, but does that always work? Is it really the best way to go, or are there other, more effective options? 

What do you all think? Feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts on cliff hangers, confusion, or any other word goddesses you recommend. Thanks!

Update!

I just finished reading the third (and final) book in this series. It's called Dreams of Gods and Monsters, and it was AMAZING. I would definitely recommend it! I'm not going to do a review though, because I think you guys might be tired of hearing me gush about Laini Taylor 😍