Reviews: (by author)

Atwater-Rhodes, Amelia. Hawksong. New York: Delacorte Press, 2003. $9.99. ISBN 0-385-73071-3.

Danica Shardae agrees to marry Zane Cobriana, leader of her people's greatest enemy, in an attempt to end a war that has gone on for so long, no one remembers how it started. But is Danica's dream for peace strong enough to overcome her deep-seated fear and distrust towards Zane and his people? This is the question posed within Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' newest breath-taking novel of magic and suspense. Though set within a fictional world of avian and serpiente shapeshifters, readers can identify with the main characters through the trials that they face and the sacrifices that they make in order to bring peace for their people. A page turner from the first to the last, Hawksong blends vivid imagery with memorable characters to form a dynamic story-line that can be enjoyed by young and old alike.

Highly Recommended
Cameron Yeager, January 2004

Atwater-Rhodes, Amelia. In the Forests of the Night. Delacorte, New York, 1999. 147 pages. $8.95 hardcover. ISBN 0385326742.

This novel of the supernatural is divided into alternating chapters, telling the modern-day story of the vampire Risika and of Rachel Weatere, the 16th-century girl who became Risika. This second story recounts how Rachel unwittingly accepted a black rose from a handsome stranger, pricking her finger and letting fall a drop of blood, an act that greatly upsets her apparently psychic twin brother, Alexander. Alexander is right to be worried, for by shedding her blood on the rose, Rachel has (according to the handsome stranger, Aubrey) signed the Devil's Book and become one of the damned. When Rachel follows Alexander out of the house that night, Aubrey kills Alexander and Rachel is transformed into a vampire by a female vampire. The remainder of the 1701 tale concerns Rachel's painful transformation and struggle against her need to "hunt." She at last accepts this need when she visits the home of her father, who has remarried. The first person (other than convicted murderers, thieves, and witches) from whom Risika takes blood is her new stepmother. This section ends when she confronts Aubrey angrily and is wounded by his bewitched knife.

The modern portion of the novel begins when Risika realizes that Aubrey is now un-living in a section of New York, the city where she hunts, as well as the home of the zoo that holds the only living creature she loves, a caged tiger. The story continues with Risika and Aubrey passing not-so-veiled threats through human intermediaries and concludes when Risika fights Aubrey. She is, it turns out, stronger than he. So Aubrey cravenly offers her his own blood, which makes him permanently unable to lock her out of his mind. At this point, the twin brother reappears, having become a witch. Risika repudiates him

This novel has little of the gore that characterizes some of the recent young adult horror fiction. It is generally well-written, and is likely to appeal to adolescent readers with a taste for the mildly macabre. The tremendous power of the protagonist, who shape-changes, "thinks" herself into new places, and likes to stalk about broodingly, may suit the tastes of readers who themselves like to stalk about broodingly, as may the revenge motif and the theme of the unwilling victim of dark powers that she eventually overthrows. (In this connection, I cannot help but notice that Risika's real problems are with women. She calls the vampire who transformed her her "blood mother," and of course feeds from her stepmother. The novel, however, shifts the emphasis onto Risika's struggle with the males Aubrey and Alexander, both of whom seem to be crosses between lovers and brothers.) Viewers of the current crop of vampire television shows will probably enjoy the novel, and both the book and its chapters are probably short enough to hold the attention of usually reluctant readers. But the book breaks no new ground in vampire lore, features no particularly rich psychological development, and is generally a little short on plot complications and real suspense.

Recommended reading level: Age 13 and up.

Reviewed by Jamie Madden

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