My Google Diary for Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Daughter of Smoke & Bone

by Laini Taylor
Format: select

 

When I read, I ask a LOT of questions. Here’s some stuff I searched or wondered about while reading Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor.

From my review:

Daughter of Smoke & Bone was hands down the best angel and demons mythology book that I’ve ever read.  I loved how this fantasy was set in our world, but it still kept a magical feeling because she set it in such unique and beautiful places, like Prague.  I could tell this was a book that the author put her heart and soul into.  The back story of the characters and their world was intricate.  The characters felt real. I haven’t read anything this creative and full of rich details since Harry Potter… Read More

Karou

I found Karou to be such a unique and interesting character that I was dying to see fan art of her when I finished the book. Here are a few of my favorite things about her.

“Rather, she held up her hands in front of her face, palms out.  In the center of each was an eye inked in deepest indigo, in effect turning her hands into hamsas, those ancient symbols for warding against the evil eye.”

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone pg 14

I liked this art and I know there aren’t teeth on Karou’s tattoo, but I liked the teeth just the same because of their significance to the story. :)

 A girl with hair the improbably color of lapis lazuli.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 77

Crescent Moon Blades

The knives had gleamed at her from a glass case and the instant she glimpsed them, she knew she had to have them.  They were Chinese crescent-moon blades….Each knife was made up of two blades, like crescent moons interlocking, hence the name.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 177

Characters

“As [her sktechbook] fanned open, Karou’s trademark characters wavered on the pages, gorgeously rendered and deeply strange. … She’d been drawing these creatures since she was a little girl, and her friends tended to talk about them as if they were real.”

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone pg 8

Issa

Brimstone

Kishmish

Places

Prague

The streets of Prague were a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century — or the twentieth or nineteenth, for that matter.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 24

Prague Castle

Above it all loomed the castle on the hill, its silhouette as sharp as thorns.  By night it was floodlit, bathed in eerie light…

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 25

Poison Kitchen

So the Poison Kitchen is sadly not real :(  But I wanted to share a quote about it anyway because it sounds like the coolest place ever.

The church once attached to this medieval priory burned down some three hundred years ago, but the monks’ quarters remain, and have been converted to the strangest cafe you’ll find anywhere, crowded with classical statues all sporting the owner’s collection of WWI gas masks.  Legend has it that back in the Middle Ages, the cook lost his mind and murdered the whole priory with a poisoned vat of guolash, hence the cafe’s ghoulish name and signature dish: goulash, of course.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 25

Cesky Krumlov

Zuzana was Czech, from a long line of marionette artisans in Cesky Krumlov, the little jewel box of a city in southern Bohemia.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 27

Jewish Quarter

Karou crossed the Charles Bridge and took the tram north to the Jewish Quarter, a medieval ghetto that had given way to a dense concentration of Art Nouveau apartment buildings as pretty as cakes.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 33

Tyn Church

The towers of Tyn Church reared up like devil’s horns behind the row of buildings across the street in one of which was Karou’s flat.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 161

Charles Bridge

…Charles Bridge. Icon of Prague, the medieval bridge crossed the Vltava between Old Town and the Little Quarter.  Gothic bridge towers rose on both sides, and the whole span — pedestrian-only — was lined by monumental statues of saints.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 174

Art

Hieronymus Bosch painting

When I was in Bruges I got to go to the best art museum ever – The Groeninge.  If you ever want to see tons of medieval paintings of saints dying in horrible ways in the style of Monty Python with one stream of blood coming out of severed arms, a guy getting skinned alive etc. then you HAVE to visit this museum.  And they have a Hieronymus Bosch painting there called “Last Judgement” that I have a picture of below.

Brimstone’s messenger had the body and beak of a crow but the membranous wings of a bat, and his tongue, when it flicked out, was forked.  He looked like an escapee from a Hieronymus Bosch painting…

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 30

I don’t know if this guy was crazy or a genius or spent too much time smelling paint fumes….but his paintings look normal enough until you look closer and go “What the! Is that guy eating another guy with his naked butt hanging out? This is so weird and disturbing.” *looks closer at bizarre details* *can’t look away*

Nietzsche

The character Izil loves quotes from the philosopher Nietzsche and he was such a fan of his mustache that I had to look him up.

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.  Nietzsche said that, you know. Wise man. Large mustache.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 88

A man once said, ‘Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’ Nietzsche you know. Exceptional mustache.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 122

Ballet Costume

It was a ballet costume, but no ordinary ballet costume. “It was worn by Anna Pavlova in Paris in 1905,” Karou told her.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 176

I picked this costume because it was on the author’s pinterest page but as far as I can tell it’s just a vintage costume and not necessarily one worn by Anna Pavlova.  So here’s a picture of the most famous ballerina ever. :)

Favorite Quote

The only tattoos visible as she dug out her sketchbook and handed it over were the ones on her wrists like bracelets – a singe word on each: true and story.

-Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone pg 8

I’ve always wanted a quote from a book to describe my blog title and I think I found the perfect one!!

Book Trailer

Sources

I have credited all the pictures to their source that aren’t in the public domain.  But as I was researching on the Internet I can across some really cool fan art and pinterest boards that I wanted to share with you.  They have so many more awesome pictures that you should check out if you liked this post!

Daughter of Smoke and bone Deviant Art Gallery

Karou Fan Art

Author Laini Taylor’s pinterest board

Fan Pinterest Board for Daughter of Smoke and Bone