Book Review/LOVE FEST! Days of Blood and Starlight (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #2) by Laini Taylor

Coffee, bed, and DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT. The essentials.

DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT by Laini Taylor
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
517 pages, urban fantasy, YA, angels, awesomeness, etc.
4.5/5 stars

Description: 
"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?"

To be honest it took me FOREVER to finally get to this book. I picked it up the day it pubbed in November but left it for weeks after reading about the first twenty pages. I was deeply saddened for quite sometime because I had LOVED (!) DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE but this one just wasn't ~le same~. Haven't I learned from now that just because a sophomore installation in a series is not ~le same~ doesn't it mean it's not ~le great~?

I fell in love with Prague, the setting of DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE. I read the majority of #1 on a chilly training, wanting to join Karou and co. in snowy Prague. I wanted to grab a hot chocolate and live in Karou's flat. Essentially, I missed the world Laini Taylor had created in the first book.

I've read a lot of reviews that have said this was not a book about love, that this was a book about war. That is ridiculous. This is a book about love and war that focuses on war as the medium. Although I felt homesick, DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT is gripping, devastating, but hopeful at the same time. Taylor creates yet another world I will gladly step into while remembering, "we'll always have Paris, Prague.."