Book Review: Dreams of Gods and Monsters

Title: Days of Blood and Starlight
Author: Laini Taylor
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone #3
Pages: 613
Rating: ★★★

Synopsis:

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?

My Thoughts:

If you follow my blog or see my updates on Goodreads, you may be aware of my journey with the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. Basically, I didn’t enjoy the first book, but liked the second. Dreams of Gods and Monsters continued what I loved about the second book: great secondary characters, character development, and more insight about the past and present state of Eretz.

This book also gives us more information on events and places outside of Earth and Eretz. While I liked how this added to the worldbuilding of the story, it also made it unnecessarily long. Some chapters and scenes felt like ‘fillers’ that benefited no one and it sometimes seemed like Taylor wrote them to meet a certain word count.

Overall, Dreams of Gods and Monsters provided a sufficient conclusion to the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. I liked that it didn’t have a clean-cut ending and just tied enough loose ends to finish the series at a good place.