Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor (review)

Ugh! Will Akiva (the angel) and Karou (the chimaera) ever find happiness when trouble in two worlds continues to conspire against them and their own histories seem too much to bear? Akiva’s treacherous uncle has stunned the human world by leading his battalions of Dominion soldiers to Rome, where they hope to obtain human weapons of mass destruction to wage total war in Eretz. The severely diminished and war-weary ranks of not quite 300 Misbegotten, 87 chimaera, and Karou’s two human friends are the only ones who can stop them, and this only if Akiva and Karou can convince these longstanding enemies to fight side by side. Taylor spools out nail-biting suspense and wail-inducing setbacks in prose of crystalline beauty, as clear and pristine as it is sharply brittle. Moving effortlessly between expressions of deep and anguished emotion and light bursts of humor, she integrates new characters and develops old ones in deeply satisfying ways while completing the fully imagined cosmological history that opened the portals between Earth and Eretz in the first place. Dynamic pacing keeps readers on a razor’s edge of suspense, with the desire to dwell in a richly articulated moment competing with the need to know what’s happening next (or at the same time on the other side of the portal). Though readers will be loath to leave this world behind, the trilogy ends with a sweet buffet of just deserts; the best balm for the bereft may be to start the series again from the beginning.