Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor {A Review}

Title: Dreams of Gods & Monsters
Author: Laini Taylor
Series: Daughter of Smoke & Bone #3
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Publication Date: April 2014
Source: Own
Format: Hardcover
Rating: 4 stars

By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her, if there can even be a future for the chimaera in war-ravaged Eretz.

Common enemy, common cause.

When Jael's brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people.

And, perhaps, for themselves. Toward a new way of living, and maybe even love.

But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz ... something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned, ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world.

What power can bruise the sky?

From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy.

At the very barriers of space and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?

  

So during my hiatus from here, I still updated Goodreads as I read. Here's what I wrote there:

While overall I really love this story, this writing, I struggled with this one. It took a while to get into and I didn't feel as connected to the characters as I had before. I could attribute that to the fact that there was such a long time between the reading of the second one and the reading of this one. Or my lack of big chunks of time to dive into the novel. The many different pieces of the story - all the details, the different races/species/etc, the characters, the worlds, the connections to be made... I sort of wished I had taken notes from the start so I could remember it all. All that being said, though, it still adds up to me not loving this as much. I definitely intend to reread this entire series, back to back, and see if that makes a difference. I really think it would. *And*, I imagine I would see so many things I missed before. It's a very richly told story... it's not too detailed by any means, but there's SO much going on and SO much to keep track of.

I definitely look forward to reading lots more by Laini Taylor.

All that definitely still stands. Taylor's storytelling abilities are stellar and definitely love her writing. There was just so much to this story that I wish I had waited until all three were out before reading them, so I didn't have a huge gap between the second and the third. But I'm more of an instant gratification person. I'm not good at the waiting thing if I want it now. I definitely wouldn't have gotten the factory in Willy Wonka... I would've gone down the bad egg chute. Or the juicing room.

Anyway.

Have you read the series? Did you enjoy it?

Smiles,
B