Review: Glimmerglass

Title: Glimmerglass

Author: Jenna Black

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Pages: 294

Rating:(out of 5)

Summary from Goodreads:

"Dana Hathaway doesn’t know it yet, but she’s in big trouble. When her alcoholic mom shows up at her voice recital drunk, Dana decides she’s had it with being her mother’s keeper, so she packs her bags and heads to stay with her mysterious father in Avalon: the only place on Earth where the regular, everyday world and the 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 who can bring magic into the human world and technology into Faerie.

Soon, she finds herself tangled up in a cutthroat game of Fae politics. Someone's trying to kill her, and everyone wants something from her, even her newfound friends and family. Suddenly, life with her alcoholic mom doesn't sound half bad, and Dana would do anything to escape Avalon and get back home. Too bad both her friends and her enemies alike are determined not to let her go . . ."

I don't know if it's just me but I love faeries, and when I heard this book had faeries in it I immediately had high expectations for it because of Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series. This book did NOT disappoint! Glimmerglass was beautifully written with a great plot and even better characters! I can't even wait for the next installment of this wonderful series!

Dana was an awesome protagonist! She was strong and intelligent yet caring at the same time! I really like that she didn't just let herself fall for Ethan too! (Well, at first she did but she wised up and didn't let herself be taken advantage of! She kept her head on as straight as anyone could with a hot faerie guy!) She did what was best for her and the ones she loved! Ethan, the aforementioned hot faerie guy, was hot. He was a typical player who ended up falling for one girl! Aww. :) I saw it coming but it's still adorable! :) Ethan and his sister, Kimber (LOVE that name!), had ulterior motives for quite a bit though. :o Oh yes. My favorite character (and the hottest of them all in my opinion, even though he wasn't in the book that much) was definitely Keane! Oh my goodness! He's so awesome, dressing in black, being a faerie rebel and being like an awesome fighter and teaching Dana how to fight! (Have I mentioned I've been obsessed with guys that do martial arts ever since I saw Cam Gigandet in Never Back Down? Great movie, go watch it!) I so hope there's more of him in the next book or I'll be very very sad! :(

The plot was wonderful! There was a lot of great characters and you're never sure of anyone's motive's. Through it all Dana is just questioning why she ever came to Avalon and how she can get out safely. Dana has unusual abilities that every key player in Avalon politics (and some political figures in other worlds) want to take advantage of or see wiped out forever so getting out is going to prove harder than getting in. It was a wonderful story line that had just the right balance of action, romance, and everything else needed to make a great book.

The world in which the story was set is AWESOME! Avalon is such a cool place. It's where faerie world and the human world overlap and it's the only place where both can walk. In this book, faery's can only live in faerie and humans can only live in human world for lack of a better term. This isn't something I've really seen before so I definitely loved the concept! Before everyone could just go where they wanted but faeries and human can't enter each others worlds. With out the help of a faerie walker that is. A faerie walker is a person who is exactly half human and half fey and can not only walk between both worlds but also bring magic/technology and other people with them! Anyway I got off topic. Avalon is so cool! It's a mixture of magic and technology and they are actually able to coexist! I haven't seen that before! Normally technology kills fey, and iron still does, but they are able to live peacefully (enough) side by side which is really cool!

Overall, the plot was great, the characters are likable, and the setting was awesome! I definitely can't wait to read the next installment in the Faerie Walker series!!!

Want more faeries? You can read a short story from Jenna Black that I believes takes place before Glimmerglass about Kimber and her magic HERE!