Author: Jenna Black
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pages: 294
Series: Faeriewalker #1
Rating: 4 stars
From the back cover:
Dana Hathaway doesn't know it yet, but she's in big trouble. When her alcoholic mom shows up at her voice recital drunk, again, Dana decides she's had enough and runs away to find her mysterious father in Avalon: the only place on Earth where the regular, everyday world and the captivating, magical world of Faerie intersect. But from the moment Dana sets foot in Avalon, everything goes wrong, for it turns out she isn't just an ordinary teenage girl -- she's a Faeriewalker, a rare individual who can travel between both worlds, and the only person who can bring magic into the human world and technology into Faerie.
Soon, Dana finds herself tangled up in a cutthroat game of Fae politics. Someone's trying to kill her, and everyone seems to want something from her, from her newfound friends and family to Ethan, the hot Fae guy Dana figures she'll never have a chance with... until she does. Caught between two worlds, Dana isn't sure where she'll ever fit in or who can be trusted, not to mention if her world will ever be normal again.
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Ahem. Shiny, glittery dots on the cover. Hee hee.
Okay, easily-distracted moment over. I loved the premise of Glimmerglass -- the idea that humans are very aware of faeries and vice versa and that they interact normally, but only in one city because that's the only place their worlds connect and they can't cross realms, is a really cool idea. And I love that being a Faeriewalker is something that can just happen and has a totally rational explanation; the novel avoids that contrived feeling that a lot of fantasy novels have. The whole concept of the fae/human politics is just awesome, too. Kudos to Jenna Black on an original fantasy piece that still very much plays into the traditional faerie mythology. Love love love.
And the story is well-executed too. Dana is an incredibly complex character, and her narrative is fun to read (except for the parts where she whines. I feel like almost all female protagonists in YA fantasy now are too whiny), and her emotions are real. As annoying as her obsession with Ethan can get, it's also very realistic and well-done. And Ethan - great character. His sister, Kimber, is also an absolutely wonderful character (j'adore Kimber, she's an excellent Best Friend character), and I really want to find out what's up with the Ethan-Kimber tension. Character development is excellent in Glimmerglass, even if I did get kind of bothered by Dana sometimes. My favorite characters were probably Finn and Keane - I hope we see lots more of them in Shadowspell.
The story is intriguing and fascinating. The fact that I didn't always like Dana very much made it hard to read in places, but on the whole I think Dana is a great character too - some of the stuff I disliked about her, I recognized as being pretty common to most teenage girls. But the worldbuilding is great, and we're not hit over the head with it -- it's just there, and it's lovely.
My recommendation here comes with a warning (can you guess? the narrator irked me sometimes), but I do recommend it. Glimmerglass is another wonderful addition to the growing collection of YA faerie novels with a really cool spin on the faerie world.
Links:
Jenna Black's website
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