First things first:this book is certainly written better than half of the YA out there, its author possesses a florid and creative vocabulary, so why does she feel it necessary to express meaningful states of mind with adjectives turned into nouns like a five year old? All this abundance of "emptiness","wrongness","allness",missingness"(!)is heavy and really irritating. 
 Besides Laini Taylor actually grovels in sappy romanticism, nauseating the reader with tons and tons of souls torn apart,shattered hopes,love so strong it hurts and every other possible expression of soul-searing feelings conceivable by someone fond of pseudo-poetic drama. All mixed with an abuse of flashbacks that goes completely out of control toward the end of the book, so that the reader keeps jumping onward and backward in time, all for the sake of drama. 
 It is a pity because the first half of the story is really enthralling: not only it is ha the advantage of an original setting (Prague, ever so fascinating, and Marrakesh)but it also outlines a captivating mystery, that of a girl raised by monster and used as courier for illegal and somewhat gruesome traffic. 
 Then the Angel Akiva (unbearably beautiful, of course) enters the scene and everything is spoiled: the captivating mystery is forgotten for the benefit of the well-known story of the two star-crossed lovers, which occupies the second half of the novel. 
 The love story between Karou and Akiva is all you have already seen from Romeo and Juliet onwards, with the backdrop that this isn't Shakespeare. Their love is not interesting because there isn't any kind of conflict, they are meant to be and so they are inexplicably drawn to each other from the beginning and this is it. The conflict, of course, is between them and the outside world who wants them apart but, at least in this first chapter of the trilogy is not enough to save the reader from the boredom of this endless stream of heartfelt, passionate glances that speak volumes.