Thank you so much, Laini, for taking the time to talk for sticking with me through travel, technical difficulties, and kid time and for the really excellent description of teen hair fail (been there.) Just dive into the maelstrom and enjoy the ride. Here there be marionettes and teeth and pomegranates and spiders and bat wings and blackened handprints and death and hope and courage and, of course, love, and how can anyone be expected to resist that? My advice is not to try. The detail, the scope, the sheer width and breath and depth of them just sucks you in like a beautiful, deadly, whirlpool.

When Lips Touch was nominated for the National Book Award I was thrilled, but not surprised (it was a YALSA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults as well.) And then came Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Karou and Akiva and Brimstone and Zuzana and finally the not-very-well-kept-secret of Laini Taylor exploded and it was wonderful, because there is no resisting Laini Taylor’s words and worlds. A friend sent me Blackbringer (book one of the Dreamdark series) and I fell headlong in love from the first sentence–“The wolf tasted the babe’s face with the tip of his tongue and pronounced her sweet, and the fox licked the back of her head to see if it was so,” for the record. It might be possible to resist Laini Taylor’s words and worlds, but I kind of doubt it. Check out previous interviews in the One Thing Leads to Another series here.

Laini taylor blackbringer