All Just Glass

    Finished All Just Glass last night... er... this morning. I really enjoyed it. Amelia Atwater-Rhodes writes the kind of headstrong female characters with fighting spirit that I always wanted to be growing up. When I  put on plays with my sister and friends, I was never Wendy, always Peter Pan. Who wants to sit around playing mommy? I wanted to fight with pirates. And most of AHAR's heroines seem to be of a similar mind.
    That this book was a sequel, published about ten year after the first book, gave All Just Glass some big shoes to fill. There were a lot of questions left unanswered at the end of Shattered Mirror that fans were more than a little eager to find answers to. No one wanting to know how Adia Vida would handle her little sister's demise and rebirth will be denied resolution. In fact, Sarah's whole family turns out to show us all their true colors. Can they kill the monster that wears Sarah's skin? Or might they believe that vampire or not, Sarah Vida will die to protect the people she loves? Sarah isn't left without a myriad of questions to answer, herself. Can she let herself continue on, surviving on the blood of humans when she's spent her entire life protecting them? Can she hold onto the strict vampire hunter control that has been instilled in her since early childhood and turn it to her advantage now, making it possible to feed without killing? And when it finally comes down to a fight, whose side will she stand on? The family that raised her? Or the new family that she has inadvertently made with the Ravena brothers who turned her to save her life?
     I won't give any spoilers away, but rest assured that all the answers are there. I kind of felt like the ending was a little too neat. It almost seems to fold itself up like a shirt and tuck itself away in a drawer. But then I have grown accustomed to the author leaving rather open endings to most of her novels. I think that is an outcome I prefer, though I understand many readers do not share my predilection for being left with a multitude of possibilities. Mostly, I think, people like to know exactly what happens next. But remember that it is exactly that desire for precise answers that leads to Eliza Dolittle married to Freddie and running a flower shop. If part of you wants her to stay with Professor Higgins, don't hound the author for a happy ending. I for one, almost hope that she doesn't continue this story line for the simple reason that... and don't scream at me for confessing it, but.... I kind of wish a little romance would blossom between Sarah and Nikolas instead of with the more sensitive Kristopher. Yeah he kills people, and yeah that's bound to be an issue for Sarah. But who can resist a bad boy? Not I. Of course, I don't think Nikolas is even capable of taking something he sees as belonging to his brother so it will probably never happen.

    AJG is told from a shifting, limited third person narrative that focuses on several individuals throughout the book. I liked getting inside so many different heads and the way it allows you to catch just enough of each character's truth to keep you wondering who was betraying whom until the very end. Another thing I enjoy about the author's writing style is that, while most of her Den of Shadows novels stand on their own, there are cameo appearances by characters from other books that happen so naturally that they don't even feel like cameos at all. She has this great cast of characters that interact together within their community, set apart from unsuspecting human eyes. And because each story is told from a different perspective, you see each character in many different shades of light. You get to know the many different facets that make them all the more real.
    If you've never read any of Atwater-Rhodes' work, I highly recommend the new omnibus edition Den of Shadows Quartet which includes her first four books. Shattered Mirror is there, along with my personal favorite, Demon in My View. After reading AJG I am tempted to break out my own much read copies of her earlier work. These were some of my very favorite books in high school, and I truly enjoyed slipping back into Nyeusigrube.