Laini Taylor is an artist who created Laini's Ladies line of gifts and stationery.
She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Jim Di Bartolo, an illustrator, and their daughter Clementine. She likes mangoes and chocolate. Learn more at Laini Taylor's website.
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Faeries of Dreamdark — (2007-2009) Ages 9-12. Publisher: When the ancient evil of the Blackbringer rises to unmake the world, only one determined faerie stands in its way. However, Magpie Windwitch, granddaughter of the West Wind, is not like other faeries. While her kind live in seclusion deep in the forests of Dreamdark, she’s devoted her life to tracking down and recapturing devils escaped from their ancient bottles, just as her hero, the legendary Bellatrix, did 25,000 years ago. With her faithful gang of crows, she travels the world fighting where others would choose to flee. But when a devil escapes from a bottle sealed by the ancient Djinn King himself — the creator of the world — she may be in over her head. How can a single faerie, even with the help of her friends, hope to defeat the impenetrable darkness of the Blackbringer?
Some time ago I read Holly Black’sThe Spiderwick Chronicles, largely because I enjoyed the movie and the local bookstore had a nifty version with all five stories and extra illustrations in it. I liked it enough that I started taking into consideration the whole fairy fad going on these days. I’d been avoiding books with fairies because I was utterly sick of them. But a short time ago, while in the bookstore, I found myself questioning this.
“Self,” I thought, “is that really fair? I mean, you haven’t actually read many books with fairies in them. And in fact, you wrote one yourself last year.”
I had to admit that was a good point. (Although the second part is a bit unfair, because the book in question is only about half-serious.) I decided to try Blackbringer, the first book of Laini Taylor’s Faeries of Dreamdark.
My, but Laini Taylor has crafted something nice here. She’s got some great characters, first of all. I admit, I didn’t connect very well with the main character, Magpie, at first. She seems a bit like the typical “tough girl” appearing in fantasy these days (you know, the one who is the utter polar opposite of the “doormat”), at the beginning. But Taylor uses her story not only to develop Magpie, but to unfold and reveal her deeper layers. She doesn’t just stomp and demand, sniping at everyone for perceived slights and making stupid moves to prove her “independence.” It becomes very easy to like her when she admits her mistakes, apologizes when she’s rude, and has the strength to ask others for help. (Can you tell I’m getting tired of having to swallow angry, mean-spirited women as “strong female characters”?)
The supporting cast is quite well done as well, most of them with very full personalities and dimensions. My favorites are Poppy (who isn’t in near enough of the book) and Talon. Oh, I adore Talon. He’s a “scamperer,” a faerie whose wings are too small to fly so he has to make do with flinging about the forest like an extremely acrobatic monkey on crack (in a good way). He’s immediately sympathetic, and just young enough that it’s cute, the way he’s so embarrassed about his talent for weaving. And he’s ends up having a great dynamic with Magpie.
In fact, Laini Taylor handles their relationship beautifully. I was a little worried at first, what with the air “fizzing” around them, and a few other indications of a destined love/love-at-first-sight kind of thing. But actually, Magpie and Talon start out a little snippy with each other (though not to ridiculous extremes), then develop a bond of friendship built on, among other things, mutual respect. As of the end of the book there’s no actual romance, but Taylor has built a foundation and the potential is definitely there, for future books, for a real, believable love connection. And in the meantime, their mutual little “I don’t want to admit it” crushes are cute and make sense in terms of who they are as characters.
Blackbringer also presents some good world-building, as well. Yeah, sure, fairies (or faeries), imps, demons, monsters, small forest creatures, they’re not things you’ve never seen before. But good world-building is more in the finer details than anything else. Like this:
Passing the stables, Magpie heard sounds within, beetles lowing to be milked and the bleat of hungry dray pigeons.
Dray pigeons. I mean, seriously. Dray pigeons. I can’t tell you how much I love that. Again, maybe faeries using small animals as livestock isn’t new, but it’s still a detail that a surprising amount of authors would miss. And really, dray pigeons! I’ve honestly never before seen the phrase “dray pigeons” in my life. These sorts of details really bring the world in Blackbringer to life.
Reading Laini Taylor’s prose is a bit like pulling on your favorite old T-shirt, if said T-shirt didn’t look like someone tried to napalm it (and failed). That sounds really weird, doesn’t it? But there’s nothing more comfortable or easier to wear than your favorite T-shirt, and her prose is reminiscent of that feeling. At the same time, it’s not just plain and serviceable. It strikes a lovely balance, somewhere close to the exact middle between “plain” and “flowery.” For example:
But Poppy no longer saw her. Though still half in the world, she was already lost in the dark. She faded. The color drained from her flesh and, with horror, Magpie realized she could see through her to the ground beneath. Then she couldn’t hold her anymore. There was nothing to hold. With a final shimmer the faint ghost-image of Poppy opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out and she disappeared, leaving only her shadow behind where she had lain.
Magpie lay bleeding on the stone with her arm curled around Poppy’s shadow. Then even that was wrenched from her as the Blackbringer dragged it too into the darkness.
I found this passage so haunting and vivid that I never forgot it, even after I put the book down. Part of what makes it special is that it’s one of few like it in Blackbringer. Though the prose isn’t noticeably different in the rest of the book, Taylor wisely chooses where to really up the drama. Nothing is overwrought or overly wordy, and she saves the best for when she really needs it the most. It’s extremely effective.
In all this gushing, I’ve forgotten to mention how the plot fares. It’s a pretty simple, basic story, with plenty of elements I’ve seen before. But it’s told so well, has its own voice, and is well supported by all the other facets of the book. There’s even a magic dagger and I don’t mind at all.
That isn’t to say that I had no problems with Blackbringer at all, but mostly minor quibbles. As I mentioned earlier, I couldn’t connect with Magpie at first, and she has a lot of potential to become something of a, well…Faerie Sue. She has loads of powers other faeries don’t (though some of this is explained, it’s still a bit much at times) and she was even dreamed into being like Jaenelle from Anne Bishop’s The Black Jewels. Still, I see no reason why Laini Taylor shouldn’t be capable of keeping this in check.
I also had some trouble adjusting to the, well, faerie-speak, I guess. The faeries’ English reads like a combination of pirate slang, New Orleans Yat accent, and Wiccan blessings. I did eventually get used to it, for the most part (though I thought for the longest time that I wouldn’t), with the exception of “Neh.” Neh is a substituted for “No”, but as it reminds me of lackadaisical mutterings like “eh” and “meh,” it’s not very effective as a shouted protest. Also, faeries apparently are allergic to the word “have,” because “they got to” and “they been” but they never “have got to” or “have been.” It’s a little weird and for some reason I kept twitching over it.
There were a few other things. I had some issues comprehending the sizes of things at times. Like how can faeries fit a bottle in a faerie-sized caravan, when said bottle is also big enough for humans to open? And do they take squares of human chocolate and make them into smaller squares, or are they really dealing in chocolate pieces that large? And how does one jump onto something’s back without anything to jump off of? Little things, mainly, but sometimes distracting.
Oh yeah, one final complaint — the illustrations are gorgeous and there are simply not anywhere near enough of them.
Overall, I enjoyed the heck out of Blackbringer and am really looking forward to Silksinger. My local bookstore didn’t have it in their database — grr — so I had to order it from overseas. Or wait at least a month for them to get it in their database. Easy decision, I think. —Beth Johnson
Silksinger
When last we left the intrepid — and tiny — heroes of Blackbringer, Magpie, Talon, and company were leaving on a task set to Magpie by the Magruwen (the Djinn King). Their mission: To find the last five of the Djinn who created the world.
In Silksinger we meet Whisper Silksinger, the last remaining member of a clan of faeries who weave flying carpets (because they’re all “scamperers,” meaning their wings are too small to carry them). She, too, has a mission. Her clan has long been the protectors of the Djinn known as the Azazel. As the last Silksinger, she must bring the Azazel (only an ember smoldering away in a teakettle) to his throne, where he will, she hopes, awaken. It’s a burden Whisper carries alone, as she doesn’t believe she can share her secret with anyone else.
Along the way she meets Hirik, a young mercenary with a few secrets of his own. He finds himself drawn to Whisper for reasons he can’t understand. And Whisper will need friends, because it’s not only the good guys who hope the find her. DREAMDARK is full of monsters and devils, many of whom would like to lay their hands on the Azazel for themselves.
Silksinger starts with a bang. Apparently Laini Taylor is determined to shave a few years off my life, as the opening chapter grabs the reader by the throat and runs (or flies, as might be more appropriate).
The first thing I noticed about Silksinger is that I never had trouble liking or relating to Whisper. Hers is a very different kind of strength from Magpie’s. Whisper has no weapons or fighting skills and is generally timid; even her family doesn’t quite believe she has what it takes to successfully complete her task. Nor does she herself. But in reality, she personifies the saying “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the knowledge that something is more important than fear.” No matter that she doesn’t believe she can do it; no matter how hopeless the circumstances, Whisper never gives up, never stops trying to at least do something. Therefore her strength always appears genuine and, for me at least, she was extremely relatable.
Laini Taylor juggles quite a few characters in Silksinger, some new, some not. Overall I find that I like her characters or, when I’m not really supposed to like them, still find them well-written. In one of Silksinger’s few weak spots, she doesn’t quite manage to keep all her balls in the air as well as could be. Talon, for example, who was one of my favorite characters in Blackbringer, isn’t physically absent, but the actual character of him is barely there until the end of the book.
It’s hard to really talk about the plot without spoilers. It’s not quite as straightforward as the plot in Blackbringer, adding a few twists to the good vs. evil mix.
I continue to be impressed by Taylor’s world-building skills. This time she takes the reader along a trading route via dragonfly caravans. The stops along the route are full of striking imagery:
As for the faeries, they were so fine and fancy she could scarcely stop staring at them. The gents wore colored turbans and great twirled mustaches, and the ladies had jewelry pierced right through the edges of their wings. Their garments were caftans and capes, and around their necks they wore, each and every one of them, coins with holes in their centers, strung on long silver chains.
The coins mentioned are called “tink” and they’re the main mode of payment along the caravan route. It’s these small but meticulous details that make Taylor’s world such a wonderful setting to read about:
But the real treasure was at Iceshimmer, where the local clan laid out a sparkling array of tiaras and jewelry that looked to be made of diamonds and crystal but were really ice, spelled not to melt. There were skeins of lace knit of real snowflakes too, and magical ice mirrors that disclosed visions to the gazer.
Lovely and fascinating. And for me, at least, I find myself struck by the fact that I actually remember this. While I always have had a frightening ability to remember the sequence of events in books, among other details, usually prose doesn’t stand out. No matter how good or how bad, it’s rare for me to remember something clearly enough to be able to go back and pick it out; it all bleeds together, even if it’s beautiful. But as I mentioned in my review of Blackbringer, Laini Taylor really uses her prose to effect.
Silksinger has few slow moments and a lot to recommend it. Though the series is labeled for an age group of 9-12, it’s perfectly satisfying fare for adults as well. So if your son or daughter has these sitting on their shelves, go steal — er, I mean, borrow them. —Beth Johnson
Daughter of Smoke and Bone — (2011- ) Young adult. Publisher: Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.
Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages — not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.
When one of the strangers — beautiful, haunted Akiva — fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?
Forthcoming: 2 sequels
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.
The “angels” and “devils” of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone are not quite what those words would lead you to expect, but are given an original twist. The angels are closer to the angels we know — specifically the fearsome, fiery warrior type of angel, not the gauzy kind that helps adorable children cross bridges. They differ from the popular conception of angels in that they’re placed in a religious context of Taylor’s own invention. Their enemies are the chimaera, a race of human/beast hybrids whom the angels revile as demonic. These two races dwell in the realm of Eretz, parallel to our own world, where a war has raged between them since time immemorial.
But Karou knows nothing of this, not yet. Karou is a young girl living in Prague, dividing her time between the bohemian life of an art student and an even stranger secret life. She was raised by chimaera. Her guardian is the enigmatic Brimstone, who often calls upon her to help him collect teeth. Some of the teeth are used to fuel wishes. Others... well, Brimstone keeps his secrets, even from Karou.
I first experienced Taylor’s beautiful writing in 2009’s Lips Touch: Three Times, a collection of three original fairy tales (which you should all go read right now, if you haven’t already). It was such a pleasure getting to sink into her prose again as she unfolded Karou’s world. Prague comes to life in all its quirky beauty, and the scenes in Brimstone’s shop are so visual and so detail-rich and so odd that reading them feels like walking into a Brian Froud painting. Here’s one favorite passage:
The first time she’d come to Prague, she’d gotten so lost exploring these streets. She’d passed an art gallery and a few blocks later doubled back to find it, and... couldn’t. The city had swallowed it. In fact, she had never found it. There was a deceptive tangle of alleys that gave the impression of a map that shifted behind you, gargoyles tiptoeing away, stones like puzzle pieces rearranging themselves into new configurations while you weren’t looking. Prague entranced you, lured you in, like the mythic fey who trick travelers deep into forests until they’re lost beyond hope. But being lost here was a gentle adventure of marionette shops and absinthe, and the only creatures lurking around corners were Kaz and his cohorts in vampire makeup, ready with a silly thrill.
Usually.
There’s humor too:
“It’s not like there’s a law against flying.”
“Yes there is. The law of gravity.”
At first I worried that Karou would turn out to be a Mary Sue, since Taylor occasionally pans out to an omniscient point of view to tell us that Karou is beautiful, or that Karou is a mystery even to her friends. I needn’t have worried. Though she is beautiful and has blue hair, Karou is a fully rounded character with a balance of virtues and flaws and Taylor allows her to make mistakes. She’s an endearing mix of loyalty and resourcefulness and whimsy — and a touch of pettiness and immaturity. I loved her to bits.
The other aspect of Daughter of Smoke and Bone that had me worried was the romance. One of the trends that annoys me in paranormal YA is insta-love, in which two people become eternal soulmates without really getting to know each other first. A warrior angel, Akiva, comes into Karou’s life, and though they at first see each other as enemies, a connection is forged and they fall in love. In a lesser novel, this would descend into cliché and the relationship would be one of sugarcoated perfection, with no conflict other than maybe a contrived metaphysical rule to keep them apart, or a second love interest tossed in to create drama. But this is not a lesser novel. There is much more going on than you might think. And when conflict does arise between Karou and Akiva, it is not sugarcoated; it is not sanitized. It’s tragic, and it’s real. I think Taylor may even be commenting upon the insta-love trope with this novel. When you fall in insta-love, she seems to say, there are things about that person that you simply don’t know yet.
The full extent of this conflict only reveals itself at the very end, in a twist that will knock the breath out of you and cast all the book’s previous events in a new light. The most crucial event in the story actually occurs pretty early in the page count, but it’s only later that you learn what actually happened and what it means. The map shifts behind you. The puzzle pieces rearrange themselves. Right after finishing, the first thing I did was read that big reveal again, as if it would say something different this time. Then I found myself thumbing back to previous scenes and rereading them, finally understanding their true meaning. I love books that rearrange themselves like this; last month I read a book that was unsatisfying until it was reinterpreted by a twist, and from that point on I enjoyed the book. In the case of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, I’d probably have given it four and a half stars even without the twist, and even with the insta-love, because of the sheer beauty of the prose and the intricate mystery of Karou and her world. With the twist ending, it becomes one of the most memorable fantasy novels I’ve ever read.
Also striking is the theme of prejudice. So much of the plot hinges on the hatred between the angels and the chimaera. This is a story about how two groups can be locked in a war that neither side really wants to fight anymore, but the hate is too entrenched for either side to find peace palatable. It’s a story about how people can dehumanize an Other in order to justify atrocities. It’s a story about how sometimes falling in love with a member of a hated race can make you see all of them in a new light — and sometimes it just makes you see that one person as the exception. It’s a story about how an unexamined privilege — one that seems minor to the one who possesses it — can poison a friendship. But there’s also a hint of hope that a better world might be attainable. I don’t think it’s an accident that Ellai’s garden reads so much like an Eden.
In retrospect, I can see a few seeds of Daughter of Smoke and Bone in Lips Touch: Three Times. I’m reminded of “Goblin Fruit” in that Karou is the kind of woman Kizzy would have loved to be, and in the gutsy, gut-punch ending. I’m reminded of “Hatchling” in that the story begins with eccentric people in a real-world city but quickly becomes much more high-fantasy than one might expect. There’s another similarity to “Hatchling,” too, but it’s a spoiler, so you’ll have to read the book to find that one.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone is what I wish more paranormal YA novels could be. I may sometimes seem to be down on paranormal YA, but I don’t inherently dislike it. In fact, I like it very much, at least in theory, and so I want it to be good. So often, too often, it’s not. Daughter of Smoke and Bone really is that good. Just go read it already. It’s the first in a new trilogy (though it has its own complete story arc) and I’m dying for the next book. —Kelly Lasiter
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Laini Taylor, author of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, starts us off with a standard urban fantasy look. Her heroine, Karou, has tattoos, bullet wound scars and blue hair. She is trained in martial arts and frequently leaves her art school in Prague to “run errands” that take her all across the globe. Demon hunter, right? In fact, Karou is something very different, and Daughter of Smoke and Bone is one of the freshest fantasies I’ve read in a long time.
Taylor confounds expectations at almost every turn. There are demons, there are angels, there is a war and an incandescent love story, but none of it unfolds as I expected.
Karou, she of the plaintive wolf’s-call of a name, is seventeen. She has her own apartment, a handsome ex-boyfriend who won’t get the hint, a wonderful best friend named Zuzana, and a very strange foster family. Before I even got into the otherworldly parts of the book, I was captivated by the relationship between Karou and Zuzana. These are teenaged girls at their best: funny, witty, perceptive, sometimes unsure of themselves, creative, smart and loyal.
Soon, though, the book introduces Akiva, a supernaturally beautiful man with eyes like amber fire and gleaming feathered wings. It isn’t too long before his life and Karou’s intersect. Mortal enemies? Star-crossed lovers? Soul-mates? All of the above? The book lets the innocent Karou and the tortured Akiva discover those answers for themselves.
Taylor is a master of pacing, and part of the delight of this book is the assuredness of the prose. Taylor is a beautiful writer and a disciplined storyteller. Several times throughout the book I would catch my breath at a description or witty bit of dialogue, but Taylor also managed to keep her gorgeous prose largely transparent. The words are put in service to the story, not vice versa. The controlled pacing and the masterful writing let Taylor play with serious themes without getting heavy-handed — and there are serious themes addressed here, like the impact of war, and ethnic hatred. The book does not provide a simplistic “love conquers all” answer. The problems Karou and Akiva face are real. They are deep. The dramatic and powerful ending proves just how real and deep those problems are.
Kelly Lasiter’s review (above) whet my appetite for this book, and I was not disappointed. I enjoyed this book so much that it scared me, because Taylor has set the bar very high for book two. The skill level she demonstrates here makes me trust her, though. I recommend this book for any young person you know who enjoys fantasy — and for you, and your friends. —Marion Deeds
Lips Touch Three Times — (2009) Young adult. Publisher: Three tales of supernatural love, each
pivoting on a kiss that is no mere kiss, but an action with profound consequences for the kissers' souls:
Goblin Fruit: In Victorian times, goblin men had only to offer young girls sumptuous fruits to tempt them to sell their souls. But what does it take to tempt today's savvy girls?
Spicy Little Curses: A demon and the ambassador to Hell tussle over the soul of a beautiful English girl in India. Matters become complicated when she falls in love and decides to test her curse.
Hatchling: Six days before Esme's fourteenth birthday, her left eye turns from brown to blue. She little suspects what the change heralds, but her small safe life begins to unravel at once. What does the beautiful, fanged man want with her, and how is her fate connected to a mysterious race of demons?
Lips Touch: Three Times
I'm having a hard time reviewing Lips Touch: Three Times. Intelligent language seems to be failing me. I don't want to write a review so much as I want to jump up and down and squeal like a crazed fangirl. Lips Touch is chocolate in book form. It's dark, it's rich, it's delicious, and it's precisely to my taste.
Lips Touch is a collection of three stories; the common theme, as you might guess from the title, is the kiss. In fairy tales, a kiss is often the catalyst for transformation. Laini Taylor is, without a doubt, writing fairy tales here. From the threads of older stories, she weaves new tales that have all the power of the old.
The first story, "Goblin Fruit," is set in the present day and features an unpopular high school student, Kizzy, whose unfulfilled longings make her easy prey for malevolent spirits:
Kizzy wanted to be a woman who would dive off the prow of a sailboat into the sea, who would fall back in a tangle of sheets, laughing, and who could dance a tango, lazily stroke a leopard with her bare foot, freeze an enemy's blood with her eyes, make promises she couldn't possibly keep, and then shift the world to keep them. She wanted to write memoirs and autograph them at a tiny bookshop in Rome, with a line of admirers snaking down a pink-lit alley. She wanted to make love on a balcony, ruin someone, trade in esoteric knowledge, watch strangers as coolly as a cat. She wanted to be inscrutable, have a drink named after her, a love song written for her, and a handsome adventurer's small airplane, champagne-christened Kizzy, which would vanish one day in a windstorm in Arabia so that she would have to mount a rescue operation involving camels, and wear an indigo veil against the stinging sand, just like the nomads.
Kizzy's best hope of fighting off the goblins' influence is her late grandmother, who, as a girl, rescued her sister as Lizzie saved Laura in Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market. Her spirit lingers near Kizzy still, as a protective influence. The ending of this story knocked the wind out of me. I should have seen it coming, but didn't. I liked that, ultimately, the actual fruit offered to Kizzy was almost irrelevant. It's the temptations you're not expecting that you have to worry about…
Next is "Spicy Little Curses Such As These," set in colonial India. An old woman makes a deal with a demon, the effects of which threaten to destroy a young couple's budding romance. There are echoes of Hindu and Greek myths here, though I can't say what myths without spoiling the most delightful plot twist in the story! I thought I knew where Taylor was going with this story, and braced myself for the ending I thought was coming, and then little details started sifting their way back into my mind. A hint here, a scrap of foreshadowing there, and suddenly things looked quite different! This was probably my favorite of the three tales.
The final tale, "Hatchling," is the longest story. It deals with a race of cold, beautiful beings called the Druj, inspired by the less-Disneyfied legends of the faerie folk:
Druj live forever and have forever lived. There are no new Druj, no young Druj, no ripe bellies, no babes. If their race began as infants, that history was lost in ancient books, swallowed by fire or mold. As for their memories, they have proven unfit for immortality. They recede into a lake of mist, revealing nothing. They have no legends, not even of a time before the forests grew. Nothing has ever been new, least of all themselves. To an ancient folk dulled by eternity, children are a revelation.
That's why they keep them as pets.
Esme and her mother, Mab, have lived in hiding for fourteen years, ever since Mab escaped the Druj's clutches while pregnant with Esme. Now, the Druj have found them, and they want Esme, for reasons that unfold slowly and are more complex than you might think. This story's plotline is fascinating, and it's filled with harsh, chilly imagery that matches the Druj themselves.
I adored Lips Touch overall, and I don't think it would be hyperbole to say that this, along with Louise Hawes' Black Pearls, is some of the best fairy-tale writing I've seen in years. Fans of writers like Angela Carter and Tanith Lee should take notice. Laini Taylor is going places, with her moving tales and her lush yet piercing prose. As I said, it's kind of like literary chocolate, or to put it in Taylor's own words:
"Well, okay," Kizzy said, feigning reluctance and unwrapping one of the chocolates. It was so dark it was almost black and it melted on her tongue into an ancient flavor of seed pod, earth, shade, and sunlight, its bitterness casting just a shadow of sweet. It tasted… fine, so subtle and strange it made her feel like a novitiate into some arcanum of spice.
Lips Touch also features illustrations by Taylor's husband, Jim di Bartolo. My copy is an ARC and doesn't contain all the artwork that will be featured in the finished book; some is still blank and some is labeled "not final." But from what I can see, the illustrations are going to be beautiful and fitting for the stories. —Kelly Lasiter
Lips Touch: Three Times
Soul Meets Soul on Lover's Lips...
Although it’s been a while since Kelly reviewed Lips Touch: Three Times, (above) her enthusiasm for it obviously made an impact, for whilst I was browsing through the YA section of my local library, I saw a familiar-looking face staring up at me. It was the cover art for Laini Taylor’s book, an image which had clearly been stored away somewhere in the back of my mind, waiting for me to recognize it in the real world. And so, a few years later, I settle down to take Kelly’s recommendation. I’ve ended up with the same bouncy enjoyment, and can’t wait to track down more of Laini Taylor’s work.
Here Taylor has written three gloriously rich and atmospheric fairytales, reasonably short, but beautifully told. If Lips Touch was food, it would be dark chocolate; if it was music, it would be a haunting violin solo; and it's one of those books that forbid you from rushing through it — you’ll want to savour every word. Taylor uses immensely evocative language in her telling of these stories, and the words glide like syrup over the page. Okay, I'll quit with the analogies. Suffice to say, Taylor knows how to turn a phrase.
Each of the three tales involves a familiar motif of old folklore: the allure of faerie food, the tithe to hell, and the changeling tale, though Taylor adds unexpected twists to all three of them. As she says at the back of the book: "like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more," resulting in stories that resonate but still feel fresh and new. The connecting theme in all three stories is (as the title would imply) the significance placed upon a kiss. Though each story is set in a different time, with a different girl in a radically different situation, all are linked by their anticipation for a first kiss and the consequences — for good or for bad — that follow.
The first is "Goblin Fruit," a modern-day version of Christina Rossetti's “Goblin Market,” which introduces us to teenaged Kizzy, a quirky but unpopular girl who (like many teenage girls) hates her life. Coming from a bizarre family that ascribe to an old-fashioned lifestyle, Kizzy's deep longing for something more — something indefinable — is so pronounced that it leaves a tangible trail of yearning in the air. This attracts the attention of goblins, one of whom approaches her in the guise of a beautiful new boy at school, enticing her to eat of his goblin fruit. The warning signs are all there, but can Kizzy withstand the temptation? Or does her desire for change run too deep?
"Spicy Little Curses Such As These" is set in colonial India, and though it is based on the concept of "tithe," in which money and souls are freely bartered between mortals and demons, Taylor draws upon the Hindu concept of Heaven and Hell, in which Hell is not a punishment, but a place of purification before reincarnation takes place. With this format in mind, we learn about a battle of wits that takes place between the demon Vasudev and earth's Ambassador to Hell, a widow called Estelle. She rescues the souls of children in exchange for those of murderers, rapists, slavers, and the like. But Vasudev is a trickster and is constantly trying to best Estelle in their exchanges, in one case offering to save the lives of twenty-two children if Estelle agrees to curse just one. She agrees to this bargain, and (much like the wicked fairy from "Sleeping Beauty") interrupts the christening of an English baby called Anamique in order to tell the assembly that one word from the newborn child will result in the death of anyone that hears her.
The superstitious Indian servants ensure that Anamique remains silent throughout her childhood, but once she's a young woman, the temptation to speak grows ever stronger, especially when she meets and falls in love with James Dorsey, and he with her. Resolving that her first word will be "yes" should he ever ask her to marry him, Vasudev and Estella take measures in order to prevent or ensure this happening — though ultimately it is up to Anamique herself to make the choice.
Finally, "Hatchling" is the longest story of the bunch (perhaps twice as long as the preceding stories put together) and follows an array of characters and mysteries. Fourteen year old Esme lives a strange and sheltered life with her mother Mab, never attending school and barely interacting with anyone. On the day that she's woken by the sound of howling wolves she discovers that one of her brown eyes has turned blue overnight. Inexplicably terrified by this, her mother cuts off her braid and takes her daughter into hiding, convinced that they are being chased.
Chased or not, they are certainly being followed, by a demon-like figure called Mihai, who has a vested interest in Esme. What can it all mean? Esme gradually learns of her mother's history: that she was born and raised in the court of the Druj Queen, a beautiful but merciless woman whose capricious nature manifests in her treatment of the children in her care. They are cosseted and then neglected, until finally they are "bred" throughout the successive generations in order to provide her with a new "pet."
It's creepy and even disturbing stuff, but this world is not ruled entirely by the whims of such soulless creatures. Mihai has a secret, one that he has kept within Esme herself, one that could change the fate of the Druj forever.
Sometimes you come across a book that feels as though it's been written and designed especially for you. As someone who loves dark fairytales and folklore, "Lips Touch" was one such book. Laini Taylor is in a class alongside Angela Carter, Charles de Lint, Susanna Clarke and Meredith Anne Pierce as a writer who can draw upon the oldest of stories, place them in an original setting, populate them with unique characters, and tell them with beautifully lyrical and descriptive writing.
Supplementing each story are illustrations done by Taylor's husband, Jim di Bartolo. Reminiscent of Charles Vess, his artwork is evocative and dramatic; more importantly, they help to tell the stories. There is a collection of illustrations before each story, pertaining to the backstory of the characters and obscure in meaning until you read the tale through to its end. Each one finishes on an image that hints as to the future the characters have in store for them, and altogether they make a beautiful visual complement to the text.
Unfortunately, the cover art for the paperback edition is horrendous, forgoing di Bartolo's captivating image of a striking face (which could belong to any of the three female leads) in favour of pair of red lips in a style that is clearly attempting to mimic the TWILIGHT covers. No. Just no. Treat yourself to a beautiful book, and buy in hardcover. —Rebecca Fisher
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