Tuesday Prelude

Tuesday Prelude is a post inspired by Should Be Reading's Teaser Tuesday. Since I'm slightly obsessive and get overly excited when sharing one of my current reads, I could never just stick to two lines, so I amped up this post a bit, introducing you to characters, places, or the history the book holds...

This week, I'm reading Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor:

There's a lot I want to share about this fantastically imaginative book, but what has captivated me most is the setting: the bohemian city of Prague. The way Taylor describes it has me wanting to visit immediately with its artistic and magical atmosphere and the history that saturates the streets.

The streets of Prague were a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century - or the twentieth or nineteenth, for that matter. It was a city of alchemists and dreamers, its medieval houses glowed goldenrod and carmine and eggshell blue, embellished with Rococo plasterwork and capped in roofs of uniform red. Baroque cupolas were the soft green of antique copper, and Gothic steeples stood read to impale fallen angels. The wind carried the memory of magic, revolution, violins, and the cobbled lanes meandered like creeks. Thugs wore Mozart wigs and pushed chamber music on street corners, and marionettes hung in windows, making the whole city seem like a theater with unseen puppeteers crouched behind velvet. Above it all loomed the castle on the hill, its silhouette as sharp as thorns.

Prague Castle

I think I read that description three times and my smile grew wider with each time. Doesn't it sound beautiful? Dark and slightly dangerous? Maybe it's the art historian in me or the fact that I love places that seem to transport you back to another time, but I'm becoming obsessed with this place...


Happy Reading Everyone :)