Forget all of your preconceptions about good and evil because once you read Daughter of Smoke and Bone, they will evaporate. Laini Taylor manages to take one of the most saintly creatures and makes them evil and vice versa.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone gives you a glimpse into the life of Karou, and art student who lives a separate life. When she's not at school or trying to avoid her clingy ex, she is running errands for Brimstone, her foster father who also happens to be a chimaera. Not only do these errands take her all over the world, they have her collecting teeth.
Karou's life is perfectly ordinary, well as much as it can be, until black handprints appear on various doors all over the world. Witnesses tell of angelic beings coming down from heaven, most claiming it to be a miracle. Karou is oblivious of these strange happenings until she is attacked by a man with fiery wings who seems oddly familiar. When all hope seems lost she throws up her hands and he is blasted back by the mysterious eye tattoos on her palms. She is attracted to him, going against all sense for he had tried to kill her.
Akiva, the fiery eyed “angel”, leads Karou to wonder whether good and evil are as black and white as she believes. The thing that bothers her is that she remembers things that never happened to her, and Akiva is in them. What could be better than a romance between an “angel” and a mortal?
Taylor's story will have you on the edge of your chair, while you wander around in the labyrinth that is Karou's story. This romance is dangerous due to the fact that Karou can not touch Akiva without causing him physical pain. Everyone needs to walk on the edge once in a while.