(Heads up – there are some spoilers in here.)

I finished Laini Taylor’s magnificent book a few nights ago, after a little initial struggle, and I was mostly satisfied with the ending – though the story has mostly ended, Taylor leaves herself open to more books in this vein.  And, honestly, I would read them.

The first book in the series, DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE, was a weirdly fascinating story.  It was unusual.  True, there are a lot of paranormal-angel-romance stories going around now, but it was new to me at the time, and the character of Madrigal, the “hot” antlered she-monster that everyone was attracted to was jarring.  As was the apparent romance between her and the bad angel man, Akiva.

Anyway, the first book was brilliant.  I listened to the audiobook in the car, and it was one of those books where I made up reasons to drive places so that I could continue listening.  It had violent moments, evil moments, and lots of borderline PG-13 parts, but it was generally a weird but interesting YA fantasy.  I also really enjoyed Zuzana.  She was the cute but fierce best friend, who had many great laugh lines.  The audio narrator did a good eastern European accent for her, and that added even a little more charm.

The second book was much darker.  I’m not afraid of mean or “grown-up” books – I went through a rebellious reading phase in high school that included some very nasty horror novels – but I struggled with the ending.  It includes a rape scene.  I was so engrossed in the book at this point, and I identified so strongly with Karou by this time, that it was brutal.  I haven’t been through a reading experience quite like that.  It wasn’t gratuitous, and it wasn’t completely unexpected.  It was an important scene, where some very important things happen.  But it was an ugly reading experience.

As a male reader, perhaps some people would argue that it’s good for me to have to read this.  Perhaps it’s good to remind readers – especially male readers – what this experience is like.  Perhaps more could be done to help prevent this horrible crime.  I don’t know that a YA fantasy novel is the best place for this, however.  And this scene makes me cringe from recommending the book.  I don’t have a problem with the first book, but I probably wouldn’t encourage a student to read the second book.  I might even discourage adult readers from the series because of the intense unpleasantness of this scene.

Maybe that’s high praise of Taylor’s skill as a writer.  I’m sure no one would want a scene like this to be pleasant.  Perhaps that’s the point and I’m missing it.

The third book is better than the second book, in my opinion, and it manages to balance the darkness of the second book with the strong characters and magic of the first.  Perhaps the ending is a little too neat in some ways, and perhaps it leaves too much unresolved.  But Taylor is a brilliant writer, and I enjoyed the book a great deal.  If it would make sense to readers, I would encourage people to read the first and third books, and skip the second.  I don’t think it works like that, but I want it to.

So, I think I have to come down on the side of a conditional recommendation.  This book is brilliant, but there are some unpleasantly violent scenes.  There are some cool good guys, and some really cruel bad guys.  I think if you want to write YA some day, this is a great series to learn from.  I’m not sure that I can think of a way to tell the story of the second book in a way that makes sense but doesn’t slap the reader around like this.

Oh well.  Maybe the current trend in YA is toward evil . . .