Dreams of Gods and Monsters
Conclusion of the trilogy that began with Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight, the story of an art student in Prague who gradually discovers that she’s enmeshed in an ancient war between angels and chimera, and she’s not an angel. This conclusion adds a new player, a graduate student in biochemistry brought in to analyze DNA samples from some monsters discovered in the North Sahara, and who was raised by a Florida cult that believes itself descended from an angel. To everyone’s surprise, the cult has a point. The conclusion is a bit shaggy and shows some signs of haste; the hard work was done in Book I, a book that was propelled by the gradual unfolding of this strange world. Now the world is unfolded and the pieces are on the board and, oddly, there’s less propulsion beyond the gradual slide to the denouement. Nevertheless, a fierce and tiny delight.