Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Errand requiring immediate attention. Come.

The note was on vellum, pierced by the talons of the almost-crow that delivered it. Karou read the message. 'He never says please', she sighed, but she gathered up her things.

When Brimstone called, she always came.

In general, Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she's a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to family. Raised half in our world, half in 'Elsewhere', she has never understood Brimstone's dark work - buying teeth from hunters and murderers - nor how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself, plagued by the sensation that she isn't whole.

Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing, and Karou must choose between the safety of her human life and the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.

I am late to the party. This has been known to happen. Daughter of Smoke and Bone, if you've not read it already, should be on your to-read list. It evokes a profoundly strange and exotic and surreal world, in which creatures can be made from teeth (super creepy, super awesome) and hidden realms can be accessed through magical doors and holes in the sky. This stuff, you guys? I love this stuff. Not quite as much as I love time travel, coma dreams, and everybody getting killed by zombies, but almost as much. Daughter of Smoke and Bone was so extraordinary that my expectations were impossibly high for Days of Blood and Starlight, and while that contained some astonishingly good twists and more of the vivid imagery of the first book, it's pretty difficult for a middle book of a series to be a stand-out, especially after the amazing world-building and utterly mesmerising first novel.

Another thing that happens with series is that with each subsequent book the characters have experienced more suffering and pain - necessary for a good, exciting plot, but if the characters develop properly (i.e. not in soap operas, where everyone forgets five minutes later) characters get dark and tortured really quickly. I think that can make a book a little too draining - and as Karou discovers more and more about who she was, it gets terribly heavy. What I seek in stories is generally some sort of ultimate hopefulness, and Days of Blood and Starlight did not end on a good note. So I'm certainly looking forward to Dreams of Gods and Monsters, the final instalment of the trilogy.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone on the publisher's website

Zac & Mia by AJ Betts

The last person Zac expects in the room next door is a girl like Mia, angry and feisty with questionable taste in music. In the real world, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be friends with her. In hospital different rules apply, and what begins as a knock on the wall leads to a note—then a friendship neither of them sees coming.

You need courage to be in hospital; different courage to be back in the real world. In one of these worlds Zac needs Mia. And in the other Mia needs Zac. Or maybe they both need each other, always.

I think what was most striking about this novel was the human aspect of it - so often novels for teenagers marketed as realistic are anything but. Zac and Mia, on the other hand, seems profoundly real - people are deeply flawed (Mia most especially), little is romanticised, but their story remains compelling. 

Unlike so many other books in this genre there does not seem to be an effort to tug at heartstrings - which is not to say that you don't feel anything while reading - anything but. But it seems manipulating the reader's emotions doesn't play into it. Sure, I like books that I can expect an emotional rollercoaster out of, that fit the formula and play up the melodrama - but what is so remarkable about this one is the realness. 

It's wonderfully crafted and emotionally insightful but it isn't obvious. A very, very human novel and one I wouldn't recommend solely to teenage readers, though it speaks beautifully of the teenage experience.

Zac & Mia on the publisher's website

The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas

Celaena Sardothien is Adarlan’s most feared assassin. As part of the Assassins' Guild, her allegiance is to her master, Arobynn Hamel, yet Celaena listens to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam.

In these action-packed prequel novellas – together in one edition for the first time – Celaena embarks on five daring missions. They take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, where she fights to liberate slaves and seeks to avenge the tyrannous. But she is acting against Arobynn’s orders and could suffer an unimaginable punishment for such treachery . . . 

Assassin's Blade is the prequel to Throne of Glass, comprised of five novellas which not only function on their own, but also as a whole - telling the story of how Celaena Sardothien came to be in the salt mines of Endovier. I daresay I enjoyed these novellas even more than I enjoyed Throne of Glass - Celaena is described often in both books as the most famed assassin in her realm, but Assassin's Blade actually has plenty of assassinating. I lamented that Throne of Glass was not bloodthirsty enough, but the prequels certainly have a satisfying amount of fight scenes and blood-spilling. Celaena has a whole ton more depth as a character knowing thia huge part of her backstory, which occurs across a range of settings, all beautifully evoked - a crummy nowhere town, the unforgiving desert, the pirate island and the sinister capital - and involves many increasingly shady characters. 

Because you know how the book will end before you even start (the trouble with prequels!) there is a certain inevitability to the ending, but it remained compelling, and often even surprising (not a good surprising. A profoundly depressing surprising). The logical realities of the world tripped me up a bit - they have clocks, and the wealthy have running water, but everything else seemed stuck in the equivalent of the Dark Ages.

I very much appreciated the strong and interesting and multi-faceted female characters, but as with much fantasy I've read (and watched - I'm looking at you Game of Thrones) lately, I really question why women have to generally be subservient in fantasy realms. It's an entirely made up place where magic once existed! There's an architecturally impossible glass castle! It's about assassins and pirate lords and a world very, very different from our own! So why must the poor female characters be forced in prostitution? Why must beauty be a weapon women wield? Why does it have to be surprising that the best assassin in the realm is young and female? Couldn't there be as many fearsome women as there are men? This is not really commenting on this book in particular - it's quite a good representation generally, not damaging in and of itself, and Celaena herself is a stellar character - rather my frustrations with the high fantasy I have read as a whole.

Brace yourself for a devastating ending. Assassin's Blade is worth a read for intrigue and evisceration, but it'll probably hook you in for the whole series. You've been warned.