Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Characters:
Karou- main character
Zuzana- Karou's best friend
Kaz- Karou's ex boyfriend
Akiva- a seraphim/Karou's love interest
Madrigal- Karou's former self
Brimstone- Karou's mentor and father figure
Issa- a chimaera/ Karou's mother figure
Izil- a human with a fallen angel attached to his back (Razgut)
Liraz and Hazael- Akiva's brother and sister in angelhood
Chiro- Madrigal's sister

Definitions:
Wishes in order from smallest to largest: scuppy, shing, lucknow, gavriel, bruxis
Chimaera- picture them as a type of un-evil demon who is part human, part animal.  They are fighting a war with the angels
Revenant- a chimaera who has been resurrected
Hamsas- tattoos on the hands of chimaera who are revenants
Loramendi- one of the lands home to millions of chimaera
Eretz- home to the seraphim (angels) and chimaera

*take note:  nowhere really to put in the summary, but the reason Akiva gives Karou for the war between the seraphim/chimaera is that long ago the chimaera were used as slaves to the seraphim and the chimaera rose up under the leadership of the Warlord and Brimstone and took over the seraphim stronghold.  Since that time the war between the two has raged.

     Karou is a girl with bright blue hair (yes, it grows that way, she used a shing to get it, which is a wish implanted in a small bead: the bead disappears once you make a wish) who is trying very hard to be normal by living in Prague and hanging out with her best friend Zuzana, but we find out she lives with a chimaera named Brimstone who is her mentor and father figure.  He has Karou go through "portals" which come out all over the world to collect teeth from miscellaneous shady acquaintances.
     Karou doesn't know why Brimstone really wants these teeth, but he has jars and jars of different types; everything from animal to human.  We find out that these teeth are used to make Revenants from chimaera who have fallen on the battlefield during the war with the Seraphim.  The type of Revenant made depends on the teeth used (i.e, human and lion teeth would make either a human with lion features or a more animal-like lion with a few human aspects).
    During one of these runs for teeth, Karou encounters Izil and Razgut. Izil mentions during their conversation that Brimstone once bought baby teeth from him, which Karou thinks odd as he usually only uses teeth from grown beings. Razgut, being a former angel, sees Akiva stalking Karou and cries out to him as his "brother". Akiva then attacks Karou, thinking her a chimaera since he saw the hamsas (eye tattoos)on her hands.  Karou escapes and makes it back to the portal home.
     Brimstone and Issa leave the room where Karou is while they think she is sleeping, and Karou sees that the unknown door inside Brimstone's house has been left unlocked.  She enters and discovers another world.  This place has two moons, and while looking around Karou discovers bodies on tables which have the same hamsas on their hands but they look dead.  She soon realizes they aren't when one wakes up and tries to attack her.  Brimstone happens by and rescues her, but for coming into this forbidden world he banishes her from the portal to his home.
     Zuzanah keeps bugging Karou because, being her best friend, she knows something is wrong.  Karou needs someone to talk to about losing her family so she tells Zuzana everything. Zuzana is skeptical and is about to leave when Kishmish (a type of bird/bat/owl chimaera) flies into the room on fire and dies in Karou's arms.  Nothing is left except Brimstone's wishbone necklace.
    Karou tries to find out more information on how to get back to the chimaera's world and Brimstone since she knows something horrible has happened, so she tracks down Izil.  It turns out Izil leapt from a building to his death to escape Akiva (and his horrible life) but Razgut is still alive, and he tells Karou he will show her the portal he has been to which is in the sky and will lead her back to Eretz, but that she must take him with her.  She then uses her gavriel which she took from one of Brimstone's shady teeth trades so that she will now have the abillity of flight, and gives the second gavriel to Razgut so he may fly again and show her the portal.
     Akiva has been burning black handprints into any doors throughout the world that are believed to lead to chimaera portals.  When he goes back to Brimstone's former home he discovers Karou's sketchbook which has her human home address in it.  He decides to track her down. He is attracted to Karou for reasons unknown to him and wants to find out more about her, but is also debating killing her since he associates her with the enemy.
     Karou can tell she's being watched, so she leads Akiva down an alleyway and then confronts him and starts fighting.  Instead of fighting, he only tries to defend himself and tells her he just wants to talk. Karou decides not to kill him so that she can get information about herself since Brimstone would never talk about how she came to be with himself and Isis.
     Akiva sees Brimstone's wishbone hanging around Karou's neck and cries out that he knows who she is, and if she will break the wishbone she will find out.  About this time, Akiva's fellow Seraphim show up and are about to kill Karou, but Akiva tells her to run and battles his fellow angels.
     Karou and Akiva break the wishbone together and Karou is transported into a world of memories.  She sees Akiva on a battlefield and a chimaera with high-human characteristics; a human torso and head, fawn legs, and bat wings and horns.  This chimaera is carrying a type of lamp that collects the souls of the fallen chimaera to be returned to Brimstone to make Revenants out of.  The chimaera spots Akiva, and rather than killing him she takes pity and dresses his wounds as best she can.
     Akiva becomes obsessed with finding this chimaera, whose name is Madrigal.  He finds her and they fall in love and meet up periodically in a hidden place in the mountains where no one will see them, as love between Seraphim and chimaera are forbidden.  Madrigal's sister, who has always been jealous of her, follows Madrigal one day and when she sees her with Akiva she goes back to Thiago (the head of the army and a jealous chimaera who wants to wed Madrigal) and tells him of the tryst.
     He captures Madrigal when she comes back to the chimaera village and sentences her to death.  Brimstone is very fond of Madrigal though, and has taught her the way of making revenants.  He tells her to force her soul to enter Chiro upon her death while Chiro is blessing her body and he will rescue her.  She does, and then rescues Akiva while in Chiro's body from his prison cell.  Not realizing it is Madrigal, he knocks Chiro unconscious and escapes.
     There are no more memories from Madrigal, but upon coming back to the present, Karou realizes that she is Madrigal reincarnate and that's why she has the hamsas. Although Brimstone restored Madrigal's soul into this human body (hence the baby teeth), he kept her memories stored in the wishbone so that she would be innocent and seem like a human with no ties to Madrigal in case anyone ever found her.
     Karou is extremely happy to realize who she is, but she notices that Akiva looks devastated.  He now tells her that his efforts to end the seraphim/chimaera war were successful (marking all the doors for burning so that no more teeth could be collected to make revenants), and that Brimstone and the rest of her chimaera family in Loramendi have been killed by the Seraphim,
      Karou is very upset, but also loves Akiva at the same time, so instead of killing him she takes off to get Razgut and go through the portal back into her true home, the chimaera lands, and Loramendi.

                                                            END OF  BOOK ONE