Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 418
Publisher: Hodder Paperback
Released: 5th of August 2012

In general, Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she's a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to family. Raised half in our world, half in 'Elsewhere', she has never understood Brimstone's dark work - buying teeth from hunters and murderers - nor how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself, plagued by the sensation that she isn't whole.

Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing, and Karou must choose between the safety of her human life and the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.

 What I Have To Say

 This book was recommended to me years ago and I'm really regretting that it took me so long. Because this book was incredible from start to finish. 

First up, the prose. Few writers have the ability to write beautiful, intricate prose that invokes such vivid descriptions of such supernatural things, and not just the unusual, everything from the Chimaera to the Seraphim to Karou sitting with her sketch book, her bright blue hair being held back with a pencil is described so perfectly that it remains memorable and easy to picture long after putting down the book. 

The other thing that needs to be commented on is the mystery and intrigue that Laini Taylor creates throughout the book. There are hints and brief snatches of information about Karou and where she comes from woven throughout the story, with more and more revealed until Taylor is teasing the reader with  the knowledge that everything is so close to being revealed almost to the point of frustration, making it engrossing in the way that only the best books are.

This book was just perfect in every way. It all just works together to make something amazing. So much so that I can't think of a single thing wrong with it.