History Literature / DaughterOfSmokeAndBone

* NotWhatItLooksLike: When Akiva walks in and sees Karou and Thiago [[spoiler:actually Ziri]] laughing together, he [[StockholmSyndrome assumes]] [[AbductionIsLove the worst]] until Karou is able to pull him aside and explain the situation. Not helping matters is how Karou is [[spoiler:still visibly sporting the gashes and bruises on her face from the real Thiago's attack.]]

* {{Proud Warrior Race}}: The Chimaera and the Seraphim.

* {{Rapunzel Hair}}: It is often described just how long Karou's hair is.
* {{Refuge In Audacity}}: When asked, Karou usually tells the truth. Yes, the hair grows blue from her head. No, she doesn't have a tattoo with Kazimir's initials on her chest. Yes, Brimstone and the other Chimaera are actually real. She does so with a wry smile because she knows that this way, nobody will believe her anyway.

* {{Reincarnation Romance}}: [[spoiler:Between Karou and Akiva.]]

%%* {{Snakes Are Sexy}}: Issa

* [[spoiler:{{Reincarnation Romance}}: Between Karou and Akiva.]]

* SensualSlavs: Kazimir and his GirlPosse, mostly Svetlana.

* {{Snakes Are Sexy}}: Issa

* WeirdnessMagnet

* {{White Hair Black Heart}}: Thiago
* {{Winged Humanoid}}: The Seraphim

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Karou's blue hair grows out of her head that colour. Not that anybody really believes it, though. She actually wished it to be that way.

* {{Wake Up Go To School Save The World}}: What Karou tries and, most of the time, succeeds at.

This YA fantasy series by Laini Taylor so far consists of:

* AuthorAppeal: One gets the feeling that Karou is a bit of a MarySue. Se also the YMMV tab.

* {{Be Careful What You Wish For}}: One of the main messages of the book, excellently demonstrated via Izil.

* BiggerBad: [[spoiler:"The Beasts" who threaten reality itself]]

* {{Body Horror}}: Razgut. His fall from "heaven" and thousands of years haven't done much for his appearance.

** Karou's martial arts teacher from Hongkong is called a "sensei" a Japanese term.

** In the second book, Zuzana jokes how she would marry her boyfriend and signing as "Mrs. Mikolas Vavra", something Anglo-Saxon would say, but Czech would not. Women do take their husband's surname, but they are never used with the given name. She would just say Mrs Vavra or Mrs Vavrova (-ova is a suffix signifying a female variant of the surname).

* ChildSoldiers: Rath, a Dashnag (tiger-headed) boy winds up part of the Chimaera army, and Karou's not particularly happy to have to resurrect him in an adult body because she both doesn't have any baby teeth and because as much as it pains her she knows their numbers are low enough that they need every body they can spare.

->''"It did not end well."''

* ActionGirl: ''Liraz.''
** Karou also fits this: she has a lot of martial arts and general self-defense training, and often isn't afraid to use it. She's also very decisive over her own life, and is generally a very strong character.
** All of the female chimera and female seraphim count to certain degree, given that they're at war.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: Akiva is mentioned as having dark skin, and is half Stelian- a race of people who live on the opposite side of the world from the normally white seraphim, and have distinctively Egyptian imagery. However, it's never outright stated exactly what his race would be considered.
* AllLoveIsUnrequited: Ziri has loved Karou since [[spoiler:she was Madrigal]] but realizes almost immediately he has no chance since she's already in love with Akiva.

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Averted near the end of the second book, when after [[spoiler:Thiago's AttemptedRape]] Karou's face in particularly is badly marred, including a torn earlobe and the damage stays for quite some time until they find a magical spring with healing powers. It's even implied that [[spoiler:Thiago]] targeted her face deliberately so everyone would know what he'd done.

* BigScrewedUpFamily: The entire royal family. The fact that Joram technically has thousands of children doesn't help. One of the crown princes murdered his brother, and there's also the fact that [[spoiler: Akiva kills his father, and then Jael kills the last prince still alive.]]

* {{Boyish Short Hair}}: Madrigal
* BreakTheCutie: Ziri definitely counts. Even though before his appearance he's already experienced the genocide of his clan and watched his childhood crush get executed, he just gets worse and worse throughout ''Days of Blood and Starlight'', leading up to his ultimate [[spoiler: HeroicSacrifice. ''Twice'', no less.]]

* TheCaligula: Joram. While perhaps sane of mind, he tends to lead insane conquests, has a violent temper, incredible amount of pride, and has "visited" enough concubines to have fathered an army of over ''3,000''. It's also telling that at one point he royally flips his shit over [[ItMakesSenseInContext a basket of fruits]] and not only kills the concubine with him at the time but has a group of his royal guards all executed and [[DeadGuyOnDisplay displayed on the bridge outside]].

* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: What most human characters think of Karou. See also {{Refuge In Audacity}}.

* DeadpanSnarker: Brimstone

* TheDreaded: Even hearing the name of The Shadows That Live, sphinx-like Chimaera known for assassinating Seraphim in their sleep in absolute silence, is enough to give even the most jaded Seraphim soldier pause. When Eliza is examining [[spoiler:their bodies]] she finds that their wings have owl feathers on them, explaining why they can move so silently.
* {{Eerie Pale Skinned Brunette}}: Well, bluette.

* {{Fallen Angel}}: Razgut, and badly so.

* FluffyTamer: Zuzana manages to tame [[spoiler:a stormhunter, which is more or less a mega sized hawk]] to the awe of the Chimaera.

* GenkiGirl: Zuzana, oh so much. Karou refers to her as the "rapid fairy".

** One of the reasons Thiago was so angry at Madrigal and had her publicly executed was because she not only rejected him (and he's used to getting his way) she rejected him for an ''angel'', an even worse slight.

* HalfIdenticalTwins: Hazael and Liraz are mistaken for this at one point, but they actually only share their father and take strongly after him.

* HotSkittyOnWailordAction: Apparently most Chimaera are, if not mutually fertile, at least able to have sex with each other, which given the size differences between some of them creates interesting implications...
* IcyBlueEyes: Thiago has blue eyes, and Karou at one points notes that actual wolves don't tend to have this eye color, so it makes him more like a Siberian Husky than anything.

* KillerRabbit: The Chimaera quickly nickname Zuzana "neek-neek" after a small but fierce creature native to Eretz.

* LastOfTheirKind: Ziri is said to be the last Kirin in his natural flesh. [[spoiler: Of course, he loses it.]]

* MassiveNumberedSiblings: The Misbegotten are said to number over 3,000 in total, but only around 300 are alive by the time the story takes place. There have been enough of them that Akiva is the 7th to bear that name, since names are recycled with a new child getting the name of the last one who died.

* {{Proud Warrior Race}}: The Chimaera and the Seraphim

* HotGuysAreBastards: Thiago, also an example of WhiteHairBlackHeart. He originally looked like his father and brothers and had a deer's head, but after he died at least once had his body remade into its current form.

On the other side, she is the pupil and adoptee of the Chimaera Brimstone, whose head is that of a ram and whose eyes and feet are those of a crocodile, and who works in a shop whose doors open to almost any place in the world, if he only wants them to. Brimstone is a teeth-collecting wishmonger and it is Karou's job to bring those teeth to him. She does not know what he needs those for, nor where she came from or why she was raised among Chimaera in the wishmonger's shop.

* "Night of Cake and Puppets" (a novella about supporting characters Zuzana and Mik)

* ''Dreams of Gods and Monsters'' (out in Spring 2014)

* TheCaligula: Joram. While perhaps sane of mind, he tends to lead insane conquests, has a violent temper, incredible amount of pride, and has "visited" enough concubines to have fathered an army of over ''3,000''.

* NoSell: In ''Dreams Of Gods & Monsters'' Akiva figures out how to [[spoiler:make himself and the other Misbegotten immune to the Hamsas, which also means he and Karou can touch each other without fear of her hurting him. Unfortunately they're interrupted before they can fully, er, take advantage of this.]]

* HotGuysAreBastards: Thiago, also an example of WhiteHairBlackHeart. Also interesting in that he originally looked like his father and brothers and had a deer's head, but after he died at least once had his body remade into its current form.