Plot
Karou is a seventeen-year-old art student at a school in Prague. She was raised from birth by chimaeras, creatures whose bodies are comprised of different animal and sometimes human features. The chimaera who raised her ask for teeth in exchange for wishes, and send Karou to fetch said teeth for them. In the beginning, Karou has yet to discover what the teeth are used for and why there are rules about what kinds of teeth she can collect (such as "no baby teeth" and "no rotting"). While on one of these missions, Karou meets Akiva, an angel, and her world is turned even more upside down than it already is.
Characters
The big question is: is this a feminist novel? The short answer is no; at least, not in comparison to works like Beauty Queens or Tamora Pierce's books. It certainly has the potential to be feminist, and the premise is exciting, but Taylor falls flat as she gets into the story. One of the most prominent topics in the novel is beauty—more specifically, how beautiful Karou and Akiva are (as well as Karou's best friend, Zusana).
Every important person in this novel is presented as being jaw-droppingly beautiful. I would usually have no issue with this, because I have no issue with attractive characters, but they're all traditionally beautiful. Karou is a tiny-waisted, bird-like girl with long blue hair, Zusana is a four-foot-tall manic pixie dream girl, Kaz is a creepier version of Edward Cullen, and Akiva is literally an angel (with eyes that, as we are told constantly, are exactly like a tiger's).
All of the characters in the novel are also white, which is problematic in its own right.
Karou in particular is a definitive Mary Sue. She's amazing at anything to do with art, dancing and writing, not to mention her prowess at fighting. Her character development is minimal at best, and all of it revolves around her relationship with Akiva.
Akiva's personality is comprised of three factors: he's a seraph, he's ridiculously beautiful, and he is full of RAGING angst. Most of this angst is due to how he's killed countless chimaera and was forced to watch his One True Love, Madrigal, die.
Zusana is the sassy short pixie friend who wants to be a puppeteer. She's repeatedly described as being doll-like but terrifying (she's also the Threatening Short Friend™). This, it would seem, is her only defining characteristic.
Kaz is mentioned frequently at the beginning of the novel, but is ultimately an unimportant character who does nothing to further the plot. He could have been left out of the book entirely and it wouldn't have affected anything.
Madrigal is, without a doubt, the only good character in the novel, which is strange, since she and Karou are supposed to be the same person (Karou is the human reincarnation of Madrigal). She is a chimaera who saves Akiva's life after he's been left to die on the battlefield. Two years later, they meet again and fall in love. While she is my favorite character, Madrigal still isn't a great one. She's naïve, overly trusting, and is supposed to be the character who looks down with condescension on the primitive ways of her kind (which is frustrating, to say the least).
Story
The story is told reasonably well, but it's not a well-written book. The language is flowery, the dialogue is unrealistic, and all of the characters are flat. While the wishes are an interesting concept (as well as the fact that the cost for them was pain), they weren't explored to the degree that I would have liked. I wish that the romance had been left out in lieu of more plot devoted to the wishes.
I also find it strange that the chimaera, the majority of which have animal heads as opposed to human heads, have the same beauty standards as humans. They also hold archaic views of “purity”--once a chimaera has died and been reborn, they have "hamsas"- an eye tattoos on the middle of their hands. A chimaera without these tattoos is considered “pure”, which is a (preposterous) concept similar to that of virginity.
Once Madrigal is reincarnated into Karou, she has hamsas, which turn out to be super handy when fighting angels. They're conveniently magic, and she accidentally uses them against Akiva several times.
While Madrigal and Akiva work fairly well together, the romance between Karou and Akiva seems unnecessary and forced, even though she is supposed to be Madrigal reincarnate. There's also the age difference—he's fifty and she's seventeen—although this seems to slip both their minds, as angels age far slower than humans, making him appear much younger than he is. It would have been better without the element of romance, and if Taylor had stuck to telling us Karou's journey to find her family and herself, rather than falling in love with and becoming dependent on Akiva.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone had the potential to be a well-written feminist novel, but Taylor's undeveloped, flat characters and poorly executed plot caused it to fall short.
-Bucky
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