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Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke and Bone series


Gosh this is a hard review to write!
I loved the series.
I hated the series.
Both statements are equally true.
Let's start with the easy part: The first book was great (read previews post). The second book was a good enough follow up! Maybe a 4.5 out of 5, a little slow but still good.

Now to the hard part: the third book: Dreams of Gods and Monsters.
It was the worse book in the trilogy. There were good moments, but not enough good moments to make me EVER want to read it again.
I loved Avika's and Karou's interactions. Mik's and Suzana's. Ziri's and Liraz's... you know, the characters we met on the other books and loved!

But I absolutely hated the new characters (Eliza, Dr something, her annoying work mate, Nightingale, Scarab, etc...). They were ALL unnecessary and distracted from the story that the reader had now come to love. And the worse part? The new characters destroyed and obliterated the ending.

I found myself, a few too many times, stuck into someone else's mind lamenting the absence of the characters I fell in love with on the previous books. I am a very fast reader, a trilogy in a week is easy. yet, this book alone took me over a week. Every chapter with the Eliza character put me into 'read slump' mode.
The previous books built momentum for the third. It had everything to be perfect. This awesome fragile army of Angles and Monsters was ready to face evil on earth, the terrain was set for an epic battle. And it was epic! BUT ONLY IF you remove every single chapter that introduced new characters.
The book would have been a lot shorter and million times better.
The further into the book I got, the more annoyed I got. I was no longer reading an entertaining and amazing story but was now being lectured by the author on some random kingdom that has nothing to do with the story at hand or the previous books. Oh, and humans suck! What a wonderful underlying message hey?!

Laini Taylor had (about 100 pages before the end) given all our lovely friends a perfect ending in the book. There was, like in real life, no happily ever after, things were still in progress, Chimaeras still needed to be resurrected, etc. But it was good! Karou and Avika were finally ready to go resurrect everyone, Liraz and Ziri were getting to know each other, Mik completed his third task! It was nice and sweet and I even got teary. BUT THEN came the last 100 and so pages... they are an attempt to explain the existence of certain characters (Scarab and others) and it consequently turned a beautiful and even teary ending into a boring monotonous unnecessary CRAP! I am SO disappointed and SO angry right now. Why oh why?

so.... do I recommend reading it?
I don't know. Truly.
Read the first book. It was great! Read the second book, it was good.
Hummm... read the third... but simply skip every chapter with Eliza on it and stop 100 pages short. There, that will makes this a good book!

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