1. Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Lani Taylor

#1 in a new trilogy
read on my phone through Kindle
2011, Little Brown & Co.
432 pages
Written for YA
Awesome (5)

Setting:  Contemporary Prague as well as an otherworld called Eretz.
OSS:  Karou, a human college student raised by chimaera (mixture of different animals), meets Akira, the hated enemy of the chimaera because he is a seraphim.
The title:  As is discovered in the later part of the novel, smoke is a major part of the survival of the chimaera.  And a wishbone, worn by Brimstone, is a huge link to the present and the past...and the truth for Karou.
1st line/s:  "Walking to school over the snow-muffled cobbles, Karou had no sinister premonitions about the day."

This was a fascinating story.  There were surprises along the way, and if you've not read the book, go no further, because I'm going to review this book with possible spoilers.  Why?  Because I can't wait to read the 2nd installment, which won't come out until September and I'll be foggy about the storyline. So here goes.

Karou speaks many languages and is an art student in Prague.  She was raised by four chimaera, reptile heads, snake bodies, different animal body parts in different places, with the head-of-house a powerful being called Brimstone.  Brimstone collects teeth.  Thousands of teeth, teeth from any animal or human.  Karou helps him out by traveling through portals to pick them up and messenger them back.  Although she now lives on her own in an apartment in Prague, she fondly recalls her life with her "family," even though this life still leaves her with countless unanswered questions.

Then Karou "meets' Akira.  Their immediate attraction to each other is marred by violence and antagonism, which quickly disappears.  Karou doesn't understand this pull she has toward Akira.  She soon discovers that he is a seraphim, that angels are the archest enemies of the chimaera...and that there's a terrifying war being fought in anotherworld, one that Brimstone has never let her enter.

That's all the first half of the book.  In the second part, we meet Madrigal, the chimaera who was the absolutely forbidden love of Akira.  Madrigal who was put to death because of their love, which was considered a betrayal by her kind.  So the reader starts to wonder....how are Karou and Madrigal related?  There has to be a relation.....

The secret to everything is behind the reason for Brimstone's obsessive collection and trafficking in teeth.  Those teeth were used to create new "vessels" (bodies) for the souls of killed chimaera.  Souls that were collected from the previous body by a stream of incensed smoke.....

Well, I don't know if this is enough to help me remember what went on in the book.  Let's hope!  Clever, different story.  I look forward to the next in the series.