Days of Blood and Starlight - Liani Taylor

"Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.

This is not that world.

Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.

In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.

While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.

But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?"

All available blurbs and summaries are a little coy and vague about what this sequel has in store for its readers. Wonder no more. This is a dark, brutal novel with a war at its core. At the opening, Akiva just gave his seraphim brotherhood all the tools to destroy the Chimaera. Karou is the Chimaera's only real hope of survival. No more talk of romance and love in this story. Akiva and Karou are in different camps now, with an abyss of resentment, guilt and disappointment separating them.

I have already heard a few voices upset by this almost-no-romance development. Not everyone wants to be torn away from the heavy romantic story line of Daughter of Smoke & Bone and face the ugliness of never-ending war where nobody wins. For me this trilogy is better for it. I am not the sort of reader whose attention can be held for long by romantic angst. I love reading about love, but I am not of the opinion that just love can sustain a series of books. Something bigger than that has to be at stake. In this book, there is.

Days of Blood & Starlight also gave me more in terms of storytelling than I had anticipated. I didn't expect at all to be so deeply submerged into the world of Chimaera and Seraphim, to get to know it so intimately. I remember getting only a glimpse of Eretz in the previous book. This sequel is an adventure through the Emperor's harem, Chimaera's tribal villages, Seraphim barracks, ruins of Loramendi and excesses of Astrae, and then a look at what is BEYOND the borders of the land known to Akiva and Karou. It is such a pleasure to read something about a world that has so much depth to it, to feel like I will never know the full expanse of this world and every wonder it holds. The masterful twists at the end left me hungry for more and more, because as much as I know about Eretz now, I also know how much there is still left to explore.

Days of Blood & Starlight may be not as quirky and charming as its goulash and skuppy mischief-filled predecessor, but it's a novel that encourages you to contemplate the consequences of war for both winners and losers and the futility of revenge. The darkness, dirt, tiredness, betrayals, pain, weariness, hopelessness, violence, vengeance and grim determination set in. Even though I missed Prague and ever annoying Kaz a little in Days of Blood & Starlight, reading it was still a pleasure, albeit a pleasure of a different kind.