In the Forests of the Night / Demon in My View
reviewed by Kelly Joi Phelan
What would you do if
your life was changed drastically in a moment and you were forced into
a world where all your personal beliefs and morals directly interfered
with your survival? That is the dilemma that faces Risika, a young girl
changed into a vampire one night while trying to protect her beloved brother
at the dawn of the eighteenth century.
And what would you do if
you were a teenage author who published the story of the now three-hundred
year-old vampire Risika in a novel, only to have Aubrey, Risika’s rival
and the villain of what you thought was a fictional story, one day show
up at your high school?
In the Forests of the
Night, the story of the Risika, and Demon in My View, the story
of high school writer and misfit Jessica are the products of their own
teenage author—fifteen-year old Massachusetts resident Amelia Atwater-Rhodes.
While the plot of Atwater-Rhodes’ novels may be mildly predictable, particularly
in the former book, her startling talent for using language draws the reader
into a hypnotic and brooding world that’s at times a cross between Anne
Rice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer with new concepts worked in.
Except for Aubrey, the vampiric
antagonist that shows up at Jessica’s school one day, the two stories don’t
really seem to be linked. Well, unless you’re a very sharp reader, that
is. Tucked away at the end of Chapter Fourteen of In the Forests of
the Night is a single paragraph in which Risika passes by a window
at night and sees Jessica peering out at the world. It reads: “Jessica
writes about vampires, and her books are true, though no one understands
how she know what she does. I wonder if I should tell her my story—perhaps
she could write it for me. Perhaps it is my story she now writes.”
In passing, this intriguing
element seems to be there simply to add detail and atmosphere to the story,
but it isn’t until you pick up A Demon in My View that you realize
the purpose of the passage. Atwater-Rhodes should be commended for skillfully
working such a clever twist into the first book and expanding on it so
beautifully in the second.
But by far the most interesting
aspect is that in Demon in My View, Atwater-Rhodes goes into such
detail regarding the many stories Jessica has written (including Atwater-Rhodes’
own first novel, In the Forests of the Night, which is called Tiger,
Tiger in the book), that you get the feeling that these books are almost
semi-autobiographical. Like Jessica, it’s likely Atwater-Rhodes has been
writing vampire stories for years and I strongly suspect that the stories
by Jessica mentioned in the books are referencing real stories written
by Atwater-Rhodes herself.
Both books, with their short
chapters and quick pace, are easily addictive. I kept finding myself saying
“The chapters are short; I’ll just read another one real quick” until I
wound up on the last page (at which point I read them again).
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes offers
just a big enough glimpse of her complex and beautifully dark fictional
world to leave the reader anxiously awaiting her next novel. One thing’s
for sure: this fifteen-year old phenom has won a fan for life!
You can learn more about In the Forests of the Night and find out purchasing info at Amazon.com.
And then you can go check out Demon in My View there, too.
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