If not for the ‘to be continued…’ this would be the most gutting book of my life. Don’t worry, Doomsday Book, you still hold the title of Most Garment-Rendy. Also, Very Good YA Books, stop having intro-quotes about angels and devils falling in love because it’s far too ‘and then the lion fell in love with the lamb’ for my tastes and makes me expect a PILE OF LAME when you are actually smart and funny and have an appropriate variety of adjectives.
Ok, so. Karou is a young artist living in Prague who occasionally goes on mysterious errands to some otherworld where Brimstone, who is a chimera (not in the traditional goat-lion-snake sense, but in the bits-of-various-animals-and-also-human-animals sense), sends her back into real-world to collect teeth for him.
And you will be making that puzzled face through no small amount of the book, because Karou is all I don’t know why he wants the teeth, AND I don’t know where I come from, only that I was raised by Brimstone and a bunch of other chimera which made parent-teacher meetings very difficult to wrangle. Also Brimstone has this wishbone that he won’t let me touch, also I keep having these split-personality moments where I feel like I’m living two lives and my other life is somewhere doing something awesome, and also WHY T F is this angel trying to kill me?
Because suddenly an angel is trying to keeeel her, on account of angels and chimeras = mortal and eternal enemies (even though Karou isn’t, in any technical sense, a chimera), AND all the portals between real-world and otherworld have gone up in SMOKE (and bone just smoke) so Karou can’t get to Brimstone to be like, The hell? And I say unto you, it is time to Figure Shit Out.
And Taylor writes exactly how I like my YA to be written – uncluttered and witty and evocative and slightly smarter than you expect and with a Hilarious Sidekick thrown in to facilitate banter. It’s emotional in bits, because POIGNANT THINGS HAPPEN, but not emotionalallthetime which can be wearing and also detracts from the ka-POW of the Poignant Things.
As per usual, I’m thrilled to see a heroine with spine and sass and knives and a mean, slightly petty streak (especially when it comes to vaguely-stalkery ex-boyfriends and using minor magic to make their assholes VERY ITCHY IN A PUBLIC PLACE LIKE WHEN HE IS A MODEL FOR A LIFE-DRAWING CLASS! I approve). And fine, yes, she falls in love and that is an unavoidable consequence of being in a YA novel in 2011 but I didn’t hate it, and there were bits of the romance that I actually adored. Like the tragic bits (I am a horrible person [but the tragic bits are quite good {and tragic}]).
There’s a bit verrrry near the end where SHIT IS GOING DOWN and then hold up: flashback. And not even flashback in medias res but flashback Once upon a time there was a girl, and you are like, Dude. But the flashback escalates very quickly into DECEPTION and BETRAYAL and also it is one of the Mysteries Resolved, To Your Great Relief.
Eight caterpillars!