Interesting but lost interest towards the end ( )

I read this in 2 days and a few hours. I loved it and couldn't put it down. now I must promptly begin number 2... ( )

This book really surprised me. I went into this not knowing much about the basic plot, but knowing one major thing. I knew who Karou really was. The plot was insane and in a way, I wish things had gone differently with Karou being Karou. But at the same time, I am happy that things went the way they did, because it allows for such a rich, complex plot.

I will definitely be reading the next book and seeing where these characters go next and how certain relationships are affected by events in this first book. ( )

It's difficult for me to understand how a book could have such deep, creative and compelling world-building and such shallow and cliche romance.

The good: The world Taylor built is really lush. The politics in the war between the angels and chimera are nuanced and interesting, and more than that, you get a feeling that there's a depth of culture to both sides much more than what you even read.

The start of this book is one of the best I've ever read -- I loved the descriptions of Prague and the rapport between Karou and Zuze. I found Brimstone and Issa and the rest a compelling mystery, and I felt myself quickly caught up in the mystery of who Karou was and what the teeth were for.

For all that there are hundreds of books about the morals for and against magic, I thought that this was the first that really made doing magic feel weighty, but not objectively bad and I loved that. I liked the metaphysics of magic in general.

I love books that explore the tension between "real life" and the supernatural and for at least the first half of the book there was still classes and grades and friends that Karou was trying to balance with saving the world.

The medium: Karou is the Mary Sue to end all Mary Sues. She's slender (as we're told at least seventeen times) and The Best Draw-er and Everyone Loves Her Ideas and she has
"naturally" blue hair and never gets scared and is good at everything. But...I kind of liked her anyway. She's strong and self-contained and has a ton of agency, even once she meets up with the male romantic lead.

The ugly: Ugh, the romance. I'm not a romantic; I don't read romance and I certainly don't do paranormal romance, so clearly not the intended audience. But he's handsome and perfect and they're instantly in love and ugh, ugh, ugh. And even though they're star-crossed lovers from a past life, they were instantly in love then, too. So.... And when they're together all of the descriptions are bland and shallow and cliche.

Supposedly the sequels are more world-building, less romance. I'll check them out... ( )

I had high expectations of this book after hearing it from many people that it was incredible, but I wasn't impressed.

Laini Taylor is an amazing writer, but I found this novel to have many issues.

My list of issues:
It was to slow - I found myself two hundreds pages in and it felt like I could have been in the fourth novel. It wasn't that the book is to long, it just doesn't move fast enough for my liking.
There is to much content that wasn't explained. By the time I got through the novel I still didn't know half of what was going on. It was very thrilling and exciting, but I just felt utterly confused. If less content was explained more with a fast pace and adventure or action, it could have been better.

Overall, not impressed at all. I might pick up the next book, but I'm not impressed enough to go get it now.

One out of five stars. ( )