Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone #2)
Days of Blood & Starlight
(Daughter of Smoke & Bone #2)
By Laini Taylor
My Rating: 5
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Finished on: 1st Nov, 2019
This book was a sad one. Really.
For starters, I have already written in my previous reviews about how amazing the writing of the author is. So I need not mention again how the writing is not just amazing, but truly beautiful, magical, phantasmagorical and whatever adjective fits!
Simply. Magical.
Coming to the story of the book, like I mentioned at the beginning, it was sad. It began and ended with a different sort of sadness and torment. The entire book was like that. Full of anguish, pain, longing, and a void which was present throughout the book.
Akiva and Karou are separated in the beginning. Karou, back to her previous world, Eretz. She found there exactly what she had been dreading to see. Land full of ashes of her entire race. All of her family gone. Brimstone gone.
While Akiva has returned to his place as well, he returns with a broken heart. Because this time, it wasn't Madrigal's death which broke him. But Karou's one.
Karou's supposed death.
While he's mourning for her, and decides to spend his life fighting for the dream they once shared, creating a remade world and all that, there is Karou, who hates him with all of her heart, and has sided with "Thiago" to avenge her race. Or whatever is left of them.
Karou compares her relationship with Romeo and Juliet's one. Unlike Juliet, who wakes up to find the love of her life dead beside her, Karou wakes up to find the love of her life alive, while he massacred her entire race, her entire family to death.
This entire book made me contemplate on war again. Nobody thinks who initiated the war. Or what was it started for. In this case it might have been because of the Seraphim who took Chimaera for slaves for being "beasts" and they rebelled against it. But Chimaera aren't completely innocent either. How cruel this war turns the beings into. I've always wondered.
Thiago decides to "avenge" his people by slaughtering their enemy's innocents instead of aiding their own. This isn't war, or vengeance, it's a terrible massacre.
There Akiva tries to save Chimaera, here Karou is building stronger and vicious bodies for revenants so that they can carry out their orders. Sickening orders. Which some even happily obliged to do.
Akiva did what he had done. It is unforgivable. But he also is doing all he can to atone for whatever he has done. He saved the Chimaera from getting killed by Jael. And he saved Issa's soul (which he assumed was Karou's) and returned it back to Karou. Issa, Oh Issa!
How glad I felt that finally Karou has one of her family member back.
And Ziri, not a boy anymore but a grown man, has proven to be such a loyal lover of Karou. He was the last of Kirin, surviving in his true skin. But he didn't give it a second thought to decide what he had to do to save Karou. He so longed for her love, but didn't flinch in accepting the skin which Karou could never love. All because he had to save her.
Honestly. Three things in this book made me feel utterly depressed:
1) Finding out Brimstone is gone. Reaaally gone. I kept thinking he's going to return one way or another. But the way he died, I think it is impossible. He IS gone. To think the last interaction of his with Karou had been so brutal. She had misunderstood him and I did too. But he turned out to be a true, loving father to her.
2) Death of Ziri. Or more like his sacrifice. He sacrificed his true skin, the last of Kirin skin, to save Karou from her predicament. If that isn't heart wrenching, idk what is.
3) Hazael's death. This was unexpected. With Akiva being heart broken most of the time and Liraz being a stony cold person, it was Hazael who uplifted the mood with his words and his laughter. And from the beginning it was apparent how much he cared for his siblings. Specially his sister Liraz. He diverted Jael's attention from his sister to him so she can be spared from his lustful glances. And he died defending her for the same reason. When they approached Karou, I almost leaped with Joy. Because now, maybe, he'll be resurrected into some form? But when they realised his soul is lost and.. Gone. Damn. That pain was something. Liraz screamed and I silently did too. Their world needed some hope, lightness and laughter. Which I felt was bereaved now from Hazael's demise.
Many new characters were introduced in this book. Sveva, Sarazel, the Dashnag Nath, Ten, Jael, Festival!
Although they didn't have much role in this one, I have a hunch they'll play a significant one in the next book. Never thought Jael would turn out to be the real, challenging villain in the end when his name was first occurred in the book.
And like in her other books, the author ends the story with hazy loose ends and many questions.
With Ten and Thiago actually dead, how will the chimaera react to the deception?
What IS Akiva and his Srithar power? What has Festival got to do with it? What had happened to her? What is her story?
And more importantly, with the Seraphim invading the human world now, will "Earth" even be the same place again? Heck, will it even survive the brutal war incoming? So much to find out.
For starters, I have already written in my previous reviews about how amazing the writing of the author is. So I need not mention again how the writing is not just amazing, but truly beautiful, magical, phantasmagorical and whatever adjective fits!
Simply. Magical.
Coming to the story of the book, like I mentioned at the beginning, it was sad. It began and ended with a different sort of sadness and torment. The entire book was like that. Full of anguish, pain, longing, and a void which was present throughout the book.
Akiva and Karou are separated in the beginning. Karou, back to her previous world, Eretz. She found there exactly what she had been dreading to see. Land full of ashes of her entire race. All of her family gone. Brimstone gone.
While Akiva has returned to his place as well, he returns with a broken heart. Because this time, it wasn't Madrigal's death which broke him. But Karou's one.
Karou's supposed death.
While he's mourning for her, and decides to spend his life fighting for the dream they once shared, creating a remade world and all that, there is Karou, who hates him with all of her heart, and has sided with "Thiago" to avenge her race. Or whatever is left of them.
Karou compares her relationship with Romeo and Juliet's one. Unlike Juliet, who wakes up to find the love of her life dead beside her, Karou wakes up to find the love of her life alive, while he massacred her entire race, her entire family to death.
This entire book made me contemplate on war again. Nobody thinks who initiated the war. Or what was it started for. In this case it might have been because of the Seraphim who took Chimaera for slaves for being "beasts" and they rebelled against it. But Chimaera aren't completely innocent either. How cruel this war turns the beings into. I've always wondered.
Thiago decides to "avenge" his people by slaughtering their enemy's innocents instead of aiding their own. This isn't war, or vengeance, it's a terrible massacre.
There Akiva tries to save Chimaera, here Karou is building stronger and vicious bodies for revenants so that they can carry out their orders. Sickening orders. Which some even happily obliged to do.
Akiva did what he had done. It is unforgivable. But he also is doing all he can to atone for whatever he has done. He saved the Chimaera from getting killed by Jael. And he saved Issa's soul (which he assumed was Karou's) and returned it back to Karou. Issa, Oh Issa!
How glad I felt that finally Karou has one of her family member back.
And Ziri, not a boy anymore but a grown man, has proven to be such a loyal lover of Karou. He was the last of Kirin, surviving in his true skin. But he didn't give it a second thought to decide what he had to do to save Karou. He so longed for her love, but didn't flinch in accepting the skin which Karou could never love. All because he had to save her.
Honestly. Three things in this book made me feel utterly depressed:
1) Finding out Brimstone is gone. Reaaally gone. I kept thinking he's going to return one way or another. But the way he died, I think it is impossible. He IS gone. To think the last interaction of his with Karou had been so brutal. She had misunderstood him and I did too. But he turned out to be a true, loving father to her.
2) Death of Ziri. Or more like his sacrifice. He sacrificed his true skin, the last of Kirin skin, to save Karou from her predicament. If that isn't heart wrenching, idk what is.
3) Hazael's death. This was unexpected. With Akiva being heart broken most of the time and Liraz being a stony cold person, it was Hazael who uplifted the mood with his words and his laughter. And from the beginning it was apparent how much he cared for his siblings. Specially his sister Liraz. He diverted Jael's attention from his sister to him so she can be spared from his lustful glances. And he died defending her for the same reason. When they approached Karou, I almost leaped with Joy. Because now, maybe, he'll be resurrected into some form? But when they realised his soul is lost and.. Gone. Damn. That pain was something. Liraz screamed and I silently did too. Their world needed some hope, lightness and laughter. Which I felt was bereaved now from Hazael's demise.
Many new characters were introduced in this book. Sveva, Sarazel, the Dashnag Nath, Ten, Jael, Festival!
Although they didn't have much role in this one, I have a hunch they'll play a significant one in the next book. Never thought Jael would turn out to be the real, challenging villain in the end when his name was first occurred in the book.
And like in her other books, the author ends the story with hazy loose ends and many questions.
With Ten and Thiago actually dead, how will the chimaera react to the deception?
What IS Akiva and his Srithar power? What has Festival got to do with it? What had happened to her? What is her story?
And more importantly, with the Seraphim invading the human world now, will "Earth" even be the same place again? Heck, will it even survive the brutal war incoming? So much to find out.
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