Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Den of Shadows (Modern Nyeusigrube) — Amelia Atwater Rhodes' is currently writing Night's Plutonian Shore

In the Forests of the Night — (1999) Young adult. Publisher: I was born to the name of Rachel Weatere in the year 1684, more than three hundred years ago. The one who changed me named me Risika, and Risika I became, though I never asked what it meant. I continue to call myself Risika, even though I was transformed into what I am against my will. By day, Risika sleeps in a shaded room in Concord, Massachusetts. By night, she hunts the streets of New York City. She is used to being alone. But now someone is following Risika. Someone has left her a black rose, the same sort of rose that sealed her fate three hundred years ago. Three hundred years ago Risika had a family — a brother and a sister who loved her.  Three hundred years ago she was human. Now she is a vampire, a powerful one. And her past has come back to torment her.

Demon in My View — (2000) Young adult. Publisher: Jessica isn't your average teenager. Though nobody at her high school knows it, her vampire novel has just come out under a pen name. Jessica often wishes that she felt as comfortable with her classmates as she does among the vampires and witches of her fiction. She has always been treated as an outsider at Ramsa High. But two new students have just arrived in Ramsa, and both want Jessica's attention. She has no patience for overly friendly Caryn, but she's instantly drawn to Alex, a handsome boy who seems surprisingly familiar. If she didn't know better, she'd think that Aubrey, the alluring villain from her novel, had just sprung to life. That's impossible, of course; Aubrey is a figment of her imagination. Or is he?

Shattered Mirror — (2001) Young adult. Publisher: Sarah Vida is a witch and a vampire hunter — and a loner. Christopher Ravena is a vampire trying to pass as a normal high school student who wants to know Sarah better. Drawn to him despite her better judgment, Sarah’s forced to admit that there’s room for gray in her otherwise black-and-white world of good versus evil — until she meets Nikolas, Christopher’s twin and one of the most hunted vampires in history.

Midnight Predator — (2002) Young adult. Publisher: Though she was once a happy teenager with a wonderful family and a full life, Turquoise Draka is now a hunter, committed to no higher purpose than making money and staying alive. In a deadly world of vampires, shape-shifters, and powerful mercenaries, she’ll track any prey if the price is right. Her current assignment: to assassinate Jeshikah, one of the cruelest vampires in history. Her employer: an unknown contact who wants the job done fast. Her major obstacle: she’ll have to mask her strength and enter Midnight, a fabled Vampire realm, as a human slave. Vulnerable and defenseless, she faces her greatest challenge ever.

Persistence of Memory — (2008) Young adult. Publisher: Sixteen-year-old Erin Misrahe just wants to be like everyone else in her new school. But Erin has more to worry about than passing AP Chemistry or making friends. In times of stress, she has always been overcome by her alter ego, Shevaun, whose violent behavior wreaks havoc on those around her. Erin can never remember anything about these episodes, and she's grateful to have been spared them for a while. But when a protective friend comes back into Erin's life, he insists that Shevaun is a vampire who actually exists apart from Erin. Shevaun has dangerous allies, like the handsome witch Adjila - and they're determined to sever Shevaun's connection to Erin once and for all.

Persistence of Memory

I can't deny that Persistence of Memory has an interesting premise. The protagonist, Erin, is a teenage girl who has been institutionalized most of her life due to multiple personalities and hallucinations. As the novel begins, Erin's alternate personality, Shevaun, has been suppressed by drugs for about a year, and Erin is taking the first steps toward going to a regular high school and having a "normal" life. Right at this inopportune time, Shevaun reasserts herself and once again threatens to destroy Erin's sanity, and perhaps her life.

The jacket copy suggests that the central plot of the story involves Erin trying to discover whether Shevaun is an alternate personality or whether she is actually a separate person who is psychically linked to Erin. I really liked this idea, and really felt for Erin in the early scenes as she struggled with her visions. However, this question is resolved far too quickly, dissipating a lot of the tension in the story. I think Atwater-Rhodes may have erred by giving showing us too many long, detailed scenes of Shevaun's life. The question of Erin's sanity would have been more ambiguous, and more compelling, had we been limited to brief, dreamlike scenes of Shevaun.

Another point when too much is given away is when Erin's friend Marissa mentions a death in her family. In any real-life conversation, if your new best friend tells you that two of her close relatives have died, wouldn't you ask how? Wouldn't you ask what happened? Instead, the whole thing just gets glossed over, and it's too obvious, because that's not really the way conversations work. It's too much of a giveaway that the deaths tie in with the larger plot and that revealing the details would be a spoiler. Atwater-Rhodes would have done better to have Marissa tell Erin a half-truth, or just have Marissa be upset but not say why.

As the plot unfolds, it moves away from its initial focus on Erin. Instead, it revolves around some (rather juvenile) bickering among vampires, shapeshifters, and witches over who is to blame for Erin's problems and who should be fixing them. There are far too many characters for such a short book, most of whom don't turn out to be important. There's a major plot point that is raised, but as far as I can tell, dropped completely. Then there is more bickering, and Erin becomes more and more of a pawn in this story, until finally, in the climactic scene, she doesn't actually do much of anything.

The prose struck me as very, very simple. I admit, I like a more lush and descriptive style of prose, especially in tales of the supernatural.

The biggest issue I had with Persistence of Memory, though, is as I mentioned above: Erin is too much of a pawn in her own story. She is introduced as a compelling, tragic character, and instead becomes a chip on the table in the middle of a big, overly-byzantine supernatural bicker-fest.  —Kelly   Comments

Token of Darkness — (2010) Young adult. Publisher: Cooper Blake has everything going for him—until he wakes from a car accident with his football career in ruins and a mysterious, attractive girl by his side. Cooper doesn’t know how Samantha got there or why he can see her; all he knows is that she’s a ghost, and the shadows that surround her seem intent on destroying her. No one from Cooper’s old life would understand what he can barely grasp himself.... But Delilah, the captain of the cheerleading squad, has secrets of her own, like her ability to see beyond the physical world, and her tangled history with Brent, a loner from a neighboring school who can hear strangers’ most intimate thoughts. Delilah and Brent know that Cooper is in more trouble than he realizes, and that Samantha may not be as innocent as she has led Cooper to believe. But the only way to figure out where Samantha came from will put them all in more danger than they ever dreamed possible.

All Just Glass —