Fiction Reviews
Tempered Glass
(2024) Beth Overmyer, Flame Tree Press,
£12.95 / Can$21.95 / US$16.95, trdpbk, 359pp, ISBN 978-1-787-58875-2
Verve survived a dangerous transformation into the fae’s Fire Queen. Can she survive herself? Magic out of control, she seeks to tame and hide it. But when tragedy strikes, she’s forced to return to a land she never wanted to see again and confront a darkness she hoped had died. The Gate of the Dead has been opened and there are few places to hide.
Just as Flame Tree Press are doing a good job introducing foreign horror writers to UK readers, they are doing the same with fantasy writers. Having already published Beth Overmyer’s 'The Goblet’s Immortal' trilogy, here they give us the second book in her 'Blade & Bone' series with Tempered Glass the sequel to Brittle which was published in 2023.
The obvious thing to say here is that it is best to have read Brittle first before tackling Tempered Glass, and if you haven’t done that, then it might be an idea to skip over this review for fear of getting snagged on a spoiler….
The lead character Verve has become the Fire Queen, gaining immense power, but still learning to control it which isn’t easy because she doesn’t have a mentor, or teacher, to help her. Part of the process in mastering her abilities will involve returning to the land of the fairies which was the last place she wanted to see, but in order to save herself and the world, she has to go back there. She also has the added burden in that she is now half-fae, and comes to realise that she has been cursed, and still has a connection to someone in the land of the fae she hoped she would never see again, but we all know what’s going to happen in that department. Another burden is her desire to be with her family, and protect them, but to do that, she has to conceal her abilities.
My reluctant reader mode kicked in when confronted with Tempered Glass as it is well over 300 pages long, and consists of fifteen chapters divided into two parts. It also doesn’t help that it is a bit of a slow burn. Overmyer is very good at world-building, and sub plots, and characterisation, particularly Verve’s as she struggles to grasp with her new powers, and also struggles in her relationship with her husband who has very firm ideas about Verve’s abilities.
Overmyer is also very good at atmosphere, and threat, especially when the Fae enter the novel. However, despite these plus points, it does mean that the story does lack a bit in the action front until the climax. Perhaps this is an example of a difficult second novel, or a writer putting in information and world-building details that were taken out of the first book. Regardless of that, and the long (for me) chapters, Overmyer has an easy, engaging style that sucks the reader into the story. While the first book ended with a pretty big, and obvious, cliff-hanger, there are no such monumental events taking place here. Events are set up for another book, although I’ve seen Tempered Glasslisted as book 2 of 2, so perhaps we won’t see an immediate follow-up or another book at all, but in the meantime readers of Brittle will certainly enjoy this sequel.
Ian Hunter
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