Review: Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #3)

Dreams of Gods and Monsters (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #3)
Laini Taylor
Published: April 8, 2014 (Little Brown Books for Young Readers)
Purchase at: Book Depository or Amazon
Review source: Purchased

Reviewed by: Krista

Rating (out of 5): 3 stars

Note: While this review will be spoiler free, it does reference events from previous books in the trilogy. Check out VBC’s reviews for Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight.

I loved Daughter of Smoke and Bone. The elegant, beautiful, and lyrically crafted lines were different than anything I had read at the time. The tragic love story between Karou and Akiva harkened back to an almost Shakespearian tale. I found Days of Blood and Starlight a lot darker and almost without hope. At that point I had little-to-no hope that Dreams of Gods and Monsters would end at all happily. Oh, the world would be saved but our star-crossed lovers would somehow tragically have to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. I was right and I was wrong, but I won’t take away the pleasure of finding out how everything plays out.

The strength in Taylor’s writing is the beauty of the sentences she crafts. The images she invokes are both breathtaking and unforgettable. That being said, there were times I wished there would be a little less pretty and more getting to the point. It was never the epic moments that stayed with me since finishing the book. Instead it was the quieter moments, like when Liraz provided the warmth from her wings to the weak humans, Ziri revealing his hidden identity or a simple glance between Akiva and Karou.

There were many things that stopped me from really immersing myself in Dreams of Gods and Monsters. The books begin with the point of view of a character whom I couldn’t recall, which made me question if I had completely missed this character in the prior books. Honestly adding a character that is central to the resolution of the story, in what amounts to the last act, is probably not the best idea. I didn’t care about Eliza and for most of the book I was wondering why we were wasting time on her.

My biggest issue with Dreams of Gods and Monsters is the same I had with the prior. It was so complicated and convoluted that it overshadowed the true strengths of Taylor’s writing.

I can’t say I loved Dreams of Gods and Monsters, but I liked it, sort of. There were moments when I had to force myself through sections that I didn’t connect with. Overall it was unnecessarily complicated. The moments I enjoyed, I loved, but they were consistently overshadowed and weighed down by everything else.

Sexual content: Kissing