Literature / Den of Shadows

"As she looks down upon a shattered youth.

A shattered mirror shows a shattered truth."

Den of Shadows (also known as Nyeusigrube) is a series of vampire/shapeshifter/witch books written by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. Although there are small crossovers among books, all of the books are stand-alone novels (with the exception of Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass). Atwater-Rhodes wrote the first book, In the Forests of the Night, when she was only 13, and published it when she was 15.

The first books were published between 1999 and 2002. After Midnight Predator, Atwater-Rhodes took a break to write the Kiesha'ra series, but returned to Den of Shadows in 2008 with the release of Persistence of Memory. Following the release of Promises to Keep, Atwater-Rhodes announced that the series had officially ended, but that she would continue to write books set in Nyeusigrube.

These books take place in the same universe as the Kiesha'ra and Maeva'Ra series, albeit several thousand years later.

Den of Shadows books:

• In the Forests of the Night (1999)
• Demon in My View (2000)
• Shattered Mirror (2001)
• Midnight Predator (2002)
• Persistance of Memory (2008)
• Token of Darkness (2010)
• All Just Glass (2011)
• Poison Tree (2012)
• Promises to Keep (2013)

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This series provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: It's mentioned in Poison Tree that there's a conflict going on between Risika and her brother, but if Promises to Keep turns out to be the last Den of Shadows book, this will go unresolved and unseen.

• Action Hero: Risika (after she Took a Level in Badass), Sarah, Adia, and Turquoise. Shevaun is an Action Anti-Hero.

• Adults Are Useless: Not entirely true, since Turquoise, Aubrey, and Risika and technically adults (despite the author writing them when she was a teenager), but nobody has useful parents - Dominique is a villain, and everyone else's parents are dead.
• Aerith and Bob: On one hand, there are names like Jessica, Anne, Sarah, Nathaniel, and Dominique. On the other hand, you have Fala, Jaguar, Shevaun, and Risika.
• The Ageless/Immortality Begins at Twenty/Really 700 Years Old: Vampires and shape shifters don't age after reaching maturity.
• Alien Blood: Witches blood is intoxicating to vampires, which becomes a plot point when Sarah attempts suicide by going to Dominique's house and she ends up sucking Zachary's blood.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: This explains Jessica's attraction towards Aubrey.
• All There in the Manual: A lot of the information about this universe can be found not in the books, but by going onto message boards about the author.
• All Your Powers Combined: Both variants show up in the climax of Promises to Keep: First, it's revealed that Shantel was leeching power from basically all the other elementals; then, in order to save the day, Jay and Brina summon all the elementals in one go.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Most vampires think this about witches, and most witches think this about vampires. Subverted both ways in Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass.
• Ambiguously Brown: Nathaniel is described simply as "dark-skinned", with no real detail given. Although, Word of God says that he is black.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Aubrey kills Risika's tiger simply to threaten Risika herself.
  • She had it coming when you think about it; she killed one of Aubrey's hunters and delivered his ashes directly to Aubrey in a plastic bag.
• Animal Motifs: Risika as a tiger in In the Forests of the Night. It helps that she can transform into one.
  • Also, Jaguar as a… well, jaguar.
• Animorphism: This applies to the shape shifters. Vampires can also turn into certain animals.
• Antagonist Title: Midnight Predator, sort of. There's some question as to who the 'Midnight Predator' actually is. It could be Jeshickah or Lord Daryl, meaning that this trope applies. But it could also be Turquoise, meaning that it doesn't.
• Anti-Climax: Midnight Predator is a rather weird example. The first 200 pages lead up to a battle that's not quite a climax. Then we get what seems to be a resolution, and then we get the climax in the last chapter, after which the book cuts off abruptly.
• Anti-Hero: Shevaun.
• Anti-Magic: Jessica is the only human whose mind Aubrey can't penetrate. This is never explained outright, although it's probably because of the fact that she's more Siete's son than anything else.
• Anti-Villain: Jaguar and Aubrey.
• Archnemesis Mom: Dominique to Sarah.
• Ascended Demon: Nikolas, Christopher, Kaleo, and Aubrey.
• Ascended Extra/Early-Bird Cameo/Chekhov's Gunman: This makes up most of the series' small crossovers.
  • Jessica gets a brief mention in In the Forests of the Night.
  • Caryn and Dominique both make minor appearances in Demon in my View.
  • If this troper's memory serves correctly, Jeshickah and Jaguar were both mentioned in Shattered Mirror.
  • Ravyn is a side character in Midnight Predator and makes an appearance in Poison Tree.
• Assassin Outclassin': It takes Turquoise and Ravyn a ridiculously long time to even get a chance to assassinate Jeshickah, although this was more due to their stupidity than Jeshickah being good. In the end, they just assassinate Lord Daryl instead.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: An interesting variation. How hard a person fights as a human before being turned equals how powerful they become as a vampire.
• Author Appeal: Most of the books take place in or around Concord, Massachusetts, which is where Atwater-Rhodes grew up.
• Author Avatar: Jessica seems to be pretty similar to Atwater-Rhodes in a lot of ways. In the story, Jessica has just published her first story about vampires, after having written many more. According to Word of God, this was pretty much identical to Atwater-Rhodes's situation when she was writing the book.
• Backstory: Jessica wrote a book called 'Dark Flame' that apparently gave Aubrey's full backstory. There's many a Fan Fic showing what that might be like.
• Back from the Dead: Alex, apparently.
• Bad Guy Bar: There's one in New Mayhem - Risika and Aubrey have their final showdown there, and later, Aubrey and Fala do most of their conversing there.
• Badass Crew: The organization that Turquoise and Ravyn belong to.
• Badass Family: The Vida line.
• Badass Minds Think Alike: Played with in Midnight Predator with Turquoise and Ravyn; they never make any plans before going into battle, but they're only somewhat successful at first, and they never kill Jeshickah together.
• Badass Normal: Turquoise and Ravyn.
• Badass Pacifist: Caryn
• Battle Couple: Shevaun and Adjila are said to be one, although we never see it.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: There's a battle in Shevaun's brain at the end of Persistence of Memory.
• The Beautiful Elite: Everyone in this universe is good looking. All of them. Always.
  • To be fair, the process that turns humans into vampires eliminates small flaws in the human appearance. Of course, this doesn't explain the witches or shape shifters…
• Big Bad: Each book has their own Big Bad, except Persistence of Memory, which has No Antagonist. In some books, it's subverted.
  • Aubrey in In the Forests of the Night.
  • Fala in Demon in my View.
  • Subverted with Nikolas in Shattered Mirror.
  • Jeshickah and Lord Daryl in Midnight Predator.
  • Subverted with Kaleo in All Just Glass, although it's not really addressed.
• Bittersweet Ending: Midnight Predator has one.
• Black-and-White Morality: This is how witches see themselves in comparison to vampires.
• Body Horror: It's a pretty mild example, but the description of Nikolas carving his name into Sarah's arm to mark her as one of his victims is pretty graphic.
• Boy Meets Ghoul: In Demon in my View.
• Break-In Threat: At one point, Aubrey went into Risika's house in order to threaten her and to tell her that he had killed her tiger. Really, it's no wonder that she wanted to fight him in the end.
• Break the Cutie: Risika, Sarah, and Turquoise all before the start of the series. Atwater-Rhodes seems to be fond of this trope as a backstory - she also used it with Danica in the Kiesha'ra series.
  • Robert also qualifies, to a lesser extent. Caused by watching the aftermath of his sister's Break The Cutie, to a much greater extent.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Jessica almost dies from her fight with Fala.
• Broken Bird: Turquoise. Also, Risika, before she Took a Level in Badass.
• Brought Down to Normal: This happens to Brina in Promises to Keep. (Well, not quite normal; Jay notices that she has the makings of an excellent witch.)
• Bullying a Dragon: Risika does it to Aubrey at the end of In the Forests of the Night. To be fair, he did kill her tiger.
• Call-Back Jessica is turned into a vampire in Demon in my View. In Shattered Mirror, it's briefly mentioned that Jessica is a very powerful vampire.
  • In In the Forests of the Night, Risika's battle with Aubrey destroys an entire wall of mirrors in a bar. In Demon in my View, Aubrey visits the bar again and notes the lack of mirrors.
• Came Back Strong: Everybody who gets turned into a vampire in the series. Of particular note is Sarah, who was participating in action sequences less than 24 hours after being turned.
• Cats Are Mean: Risika in In the Forests of the Night. Tigers count as cats, right?
  • Also, if jaguars count, well, then, Jaguar.
• Children Forced to Kill: It's implied in Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass that Sarah and Adia started killing vampires at an incredibly young age.
• Clear My Name: Nikolas didn't do a lot of the things the Vida line accused him of in Shattered Mirror, although he doesn't actively work to clear his name. He's eventually forgiven. The same thing applies to Kaleo, except that he actually did a lot of the crimes he was accused of. [[spoiler: He was forgiven anyway, although Sarah wanted to kill him in the beginning of All Just Glass.
• Contrived Coincidence: In Shattered Mirror. Sarah just happens to meet Christopher and Nissa, Nikolas's siblings, in school right before she finally finds Nikolas.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In Shattered Mirror, after Dominique finds out Sarah was having contact with vampires, she restricts her magic and threatens to take it away entirely.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover of Shattered Mirror looks like it's about gang violence.
• Curse That Cures: Jessica's becoming a vampire allowed Caryn and Aubrey to more effectively heal her.
• Cursed with Awesome: Most vampire hunters feel this way about their abilities in one way or another.
  • Also, Erin. Because she was bonded to Shevaun through Adjila's magic, she was presumed to be insane.
• Dark and Troubled Past: We see a good bit of Risika's, and we hear about Turquoise's.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Aubrey, Jaguar, Nikolas (debatably), Shevaun, Adjila, Pandora.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Sort of. She's not on the dark side, but being around it has made her forget.
• Dawson Casting: The cover models for Persistence of Memory, All Just Glass, and Poison Tree.
• Daywalking Vampire
• Death by Genre Savviness: Jessica gets turned into a vampire (a form of dying) due to her being so Genre Savvy that she released books accurately chronicling the lives of vampires without their permission.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: The series is fond of this trope. Risika, Jessica, and Turquoise all have both parents dead, Sarah's father is dead, and Erin's mother is dead. The only living parents we ever see are Dominique and Erin's father.
• Defictionalization: Inverted then subverted in the transition from In the Forests of the Night to Demon in my View; at first, it seems like defictionalization in reverse (so it's fictionalization?), but then it turns out it all really did happen.
• Despair Event Horizon: For Turquoise, it was the death of her family.
• Did Not Die That Way: Sarah and Adia always believed that a vampire had killed their father. It was actually Dominique.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: It tales almost no effort whatsoever for Turquoise to kill the Big Bad of Midnight Predator, Lord Daryl.
• Disappeared Dad: Sarah and Adia's father in Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass. In the latter book, it's revealed that that was completely Dominique's fault.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Jessica writes a book that makes vampires look bad, not even knowing that the content of the book was real... so everybody tries to kill her.
• Disney Death: Jessica gets one in Demon in my View.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: It's incredibly easy to take Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass as a metaphor for homosexuality. Considering that Atwater-Rhodes herself is gay, this is very likely.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": See Only Known by Their Nickname below.
• Don't Tell Mama: Sarah (and later Aida) don't want to tell Dominique that Sarah is in a Secret Relationship with Christopher.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Anne's death was required by the plot of Demon in my View, but her means of death had almost nothing to do with it.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the Forests of the Night is the only book in the series told in first person.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: One of the themes of In the Forests of the Night is how much Risika's life improves when she finally stands up for herself and fights Aubrey.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Most brunette vampires.
• Emergency Stash: Sarah, and presumably other Vida witches, are shown to keep weapons everywhere. Literally, everywhere where people won't be suspicious, she has weapons.
• Emergency Transformation: Sassy gave Erin some of his blood, allowing her to change into a hyena, in order to save her life while Shevaun's mind was breaking down.
  • Aubrey made Jessica a vampire so that Caryn could heal her more effectively.
  • Also happens at the end of Shattered Mirror to Sarah.
• The End... Or Is It?: Turquoise and Ravyn never manage to kill Jeshickah by the end of Midnight Predator.
  • Demon in my View ends with Jessica turned into a vampire... yet she's still writing stories, and there are plenty of vampires that would probably like to kill her.
• Enfante Terrible: While not what Jessica's mother thought, going unborn for two decades in a vampiric womb made Jessica more Siete's child than the child of either of her parents. Her mother gave her up because she couldn't take the reminder of that portion of her life.
• Epigraph: All of the books begin with a poem. The title of the story is often taken from that poem, as in In the Forests of the Night and Demon in my View.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Jaguar is reluctant to beat his slaves or even command them to harshly.
  • Of course, there is some question as to whether or not Jaguar counts as evil. Yes, he was running Midnight, which is basically a command center for the slave trade, but he is much less harsh than other slave owners, and he ends up helping Turquoise more than he harms her.
  • There's also the fact that New Mayhem, a city for vampires, doesn't allow the slave trade.
• Everybody Lives: There's a surprisingly small amount of death in these books. Nobody dies in In the Forests of the Night, Shattered Mirror, Persistence of Memory, or All Just Glass.
• Evil Gloating: Aubrey does this right after he kills Risika's tiger.
• Evil Pays Better: Presumably the reason Jaguar allows the slave trade in Midnight despite not really liking it.
• Expy: One of the criticisms that the series receives is that its characters are all carbon copies of each other. In particular, this criticism applies to the similarities between Aubrey, Christopher, Jaguar, and Zane (from the Kiesha'ra series).
  • It probably doesn't help that Aubrey and Jaguar are somewhat underdeveloped, making superficial similarities seem much larger.
  • Sarah is a blond, Book Dumb, Ordinary High-School Student who spends her spare time hunting vampires and falling in love with them. Any of this sound familiar?
• Failure Is the Only Option: You'd think that since the books are so short, this wouldn't be a problem, but if not for this trope, Midnight Predator would be even shorter.
• Fake Memories: Witches give them to anyone who sees their powers.
• Faking the Dead: Sarah does this briefly in All Just Glass
• Fantastic Drug: Witches blood is intoxicating to vampires, as Sarah learns the hard way. Some vampires are addicted to it, like Olivia.
• First-Name Basis: The only characters given last names are members of different lines.
• Fight Scene: Very frequent, especially in Midnight Predator.
• Flashback: In the Forests of the Night is 50% flashbacks to when Rachel first became a vampire.
  • It's also done in Midnight Predator several times to go to Catherine's childhood.
  • Also, the death of Sarah and Adia's father is shown in a flashback in All Just Glass.
• Flower Motifs: The symbol of vampires is a black rose.
• Follow the Leader: The dynamic between Sarah and Christopher is a lot like the one between Angel and Buffy in some episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Sarah and Adia respectively.
• Foreshadowing: See Early-Bird Cameo above.
• Forgot I Could Fly: In some books, like Demon in my View and Shattered Mirror, vampires don't shape shift at all, even in situations where it would make a lot of sense to.
• Friend to All Living Things: SingleEarth
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Nissa the whole time, Kristopher, Nikolas, and Sarah from All Just Glass on.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: In the Forests of the Night is about Risika gradually accepting her place in the world as a vampire.
  • Also, Fala, Moira, Aubrey, Kaleo, Lord Daryl, Jaguar, Jeshickah, Jessica, and Nikolas are all pretty accepting of their vampirism.
• Generation Xerox: Sarah falls in love with a vampire and rebels against her family to keep this romance. Turns out, so did Dominique.
• Genre Savvy: Jessica is one of the best examples there is. Having written almost 20 novels about the vampire world, she knows more about it than some actual vampires.
• The Ghost: Siete in Demon in my View. He never shows up and is only mentioned in Jessica's thoughts, but ends up having a pretty big impact on the plot anyway.
• Ghost Memory: Erin has some hints of Shevaun's memories because of the way that they're linked to each other, such as how they're both good at foreign languages.
  • Jessica's stories come from Siete, whose memories she gained because her mother was kept pregnant with her for twenty years due to his magic. (Ironically enough, Siete acts as The Ghost in Demon in my View.)
• Gone Horribly Right: In Promises to Keep, Jay's attempt to free Pet's mind leads to the elemental bonded to her starting a war with Leona, causing horrible "natural disasters" and nasty side-effects to every being bonded to Leona (read: basically all of Nyeusigrube).
• Good Is Boring: Jessica's favorite character in "Tiger, Tiger" (In the Forests of the Night) is Aubrey, the villain.
• Good Is Not Nice: Every single protagonist the series has ever had, with the possible exception of Erin.
• Good Is Not Soft: Turquoise and Sarah and Adia and Risika and Shevaun and Jessica and Kristopher and... how about we go with every major protagonist in the series? Except Erin. And Caryn.
• Good Parents: Turquoise's parents qulaify.
• Gray-and-Grey Morality: The entire point of Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass is that this applies to real life. Ironically enough, some of the other books don't have this morality.
• Growing Up Sucks: Played with in In the Forests of the Night and Midnight Predator.
  • This could also apply to Dominique's backstory that we get in All Just Glass.
• Guns Are Useless: Apparently, although no one ever gives a reason why.
• Happily Ever After: Persistence of Memory ends with Erin becoming a hyena shapeshifter with Sassy, apparently doing nothing but roaming around and having a good time with him. All her problems were solved, and she doesn't appear to have a whole lot of difficulties.
• Happily Married: They're not technically married, but Shevaun and Adjila sure do act like it.
• Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: Basically, the point of Single Earth is to ask this to everyone else.
• Healing Hands: The Smoke Line has them.
• Heel–Face Turn: Aubrey and Kaleo do this.
• Hero Antagonist: All Just Glass basically features a bunch of protagonists trying to kill each other. The only major character who isn't a protagonist is Dominique, and even she's more neutral than evil.
• Heroic BSoD: Turquoise and Risika have it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Caryn almost does one in Demon in my View, but Aubrey decides not to kill her.
• Hidden Depths: Jay starts out as comic relief, but he quickly sheds this image.
• High-School Dance: Sarah attends one with Christopher. It doesn't end well for anyone.
• Hollywood Tactics: For some reason, witches never use any weapons more advanced than knives or swords. This is especially annoying in Shattered Mirror when Sarah invades a house that she knows is filled with vampires for the purpose of getting a vampire alone and stabbing it. As opposed to, you know, just going in and shooting everything that moves.
  • This also applies in Midnight Predator. The narration says that concealing a weapon in Midnight would be impossible, but there was never any attempt to check for weapons, and it would be hilariously easy to just hide a gun and shoot Jeshickah the first time anyone sees her. Particularly since without a weapon, there's not really much they can do to kill her.
• Hypocrite: Caryn Smoke. Despite being part of Single Earth, an organization working to stop witches and vampires from hunting each other, she still gives medical support to the witches who hunt vampires.
  • Really, everyone who appears in Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass act hypocritical at one point or another.
• I Am a Monster: Christopher struggles with this. Nissa does too, to a lesser extent.
• I Am Not My Mother: Sarah feels this way, and Adia does too, to a lesser extent. Neither of them state it outright.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Dominique's internal justification for killing her husband.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Risika comes to really resent Ather, even if it's mostly subconscious.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Adia uses this in All Just Glass to get away from a vampire who was talking to her about Sarah's whereabouts.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Very powerfully done with Siete towards Jessica's mother. He'd offered to turn her for years, and it's clear he was in love with her, but he backed off when she married. However, when an accident left her widowed, pregnant, and desperate, he agreed to turn her when she asked. He also didn't seek revenge on her or Jessica after she found a way to turn back.
• I Will Find You: It's been the Vida line's mission to find and kill Nikolas for two hundred years! And he was in the same town as them the entire time! And by the end of All Just Glass, he's still not dead!
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass, the only two books in the series to be closely interconnected, both have titles that reference glass.
• Idiot Ball: Nikolas in Shattered Mirror. He's aware that Sarah is trying to kill him and knows where he lives, yet he does nothing about this.
  • Or, to cite a much bigger example, Turquoise and Ravyn in the beginning of Midnight Predator. They go into Midnight planning to kill Jeshickah. Yet, they go in without a weapon because they think it will be detected. For... some reason.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: On Sarah's first meeting with Nikolas, he simply carves his name into her arm instead of killing her.
• Immortality: All vampires have it.
• Immortality Bisexuality: According to Word of God, many of the vampires (the author didn't specify who) are bisexual due to their immortality.
• Important Hair Cut: One of the times that Shevaun took over Erin, she tried to cut off Erin's long hair, due to Shevaun having shorter hair. This resulted in some pretty bad cuts on Erin's neck. Erin cut her hair to shoulder length and never wore it longer.
• The Infiltration: Witches rely on this a lot to kill vampires.
• Interspecies Romance: Shevaun (a vampire) and Adjila (a triste) surprisingly have the most stable relationship in the series despite their respective species being mortal enemies.
  • Sarik (a tiger shapeshifter) and Jason (a vampire) in Poison Tree.
  • This applies to Sarah and Kristopher in Shattered Mirror, until Sarah gets turned into a vampire.
  • It also applies to Jessica and Aubrey in Demon in my View, until Jessica gets turned into a vampire as well. See a pattern yet?
  • The pattern plays yet again in Persistence of Memory; Erin and Sassy's romance is interspecies until Erin becomes a hyena shapeshifter.
• It's Personal: Sort of. Sarah and the other Vidas try to hunt Nikolas because he killed Elizabeth Vida… almost 200 years ago.
• Jerkass: Lord Daryl and Jeshickah.
  • Aubrey could qualify, although he's more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold / Villain Decay: In a very extreme example, Aubrey goes from being the villain in In the Forests of the Night to being one of the two protagonists in Demon in my View.
• Karma Houdini: In spite of the fact that he did do good things, the fact stands that Nikolas did indeed kill Elizabeth Vida, as well as a whole lot of others. But he never owns up to this, and everyone seems to forget about it.
  • The same thing happened to Kaleo.
• Karmic Death: The Rites of Kin are all about doing this to any vampire that kills a Vida witch. They're not used a whole lot until Sarah becomes a vampire.
  • Turquoise kills Lord Daryl because of his mistreatment of her while she was a slave, in order to further her happy ending.
  • The reason that the Vida line is so dedicated to killing Nikolas is that he killed Elizabeth 200 years ago. But they never succeed.
• Kill It with Fire / Pyromaniac: Fala wants to do this to Ash Night (Jessica) so that she would "better fit her name."
• The Killer in Me: Christopher, Nikolas, Adia, and especially Sarah struggle with this.
• Kiss of the Vampire: Aubrey bites Caryn in Demon in my View. The process of it is described to be more like having sex than being bitten in the arm.
• Last-Name Basis: We never find out Lord Daryl's first name.
• Last of Her Kind: There are only three remaining Vidas: Sarah, Adia, and Dominique.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The blurb for All Just Glass gives away that Sarah was turned into a vampire in Shatterd Mirror.
• Left Hanging: Midnight Predator had an infamously open ending. Shattered Mirror did too, until All Just Glass cleared things up.
• Life Drinker: Vampires usually kill anyone they take blood from.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Sarah is the light to Adia's dark in Shattered Mirror. It's reversed in All Just Glass.
• Light Is Not Good: The witches may seem like the good guys, but it's pretty clear that they're just as bad as vampires, just in different ways.
• Lighter and Softer: All Just Glass is considerably lighter than Shattered Mirror.
• Literary Allusion Title: In the Forests of the Night and Demon in my View, both of whose titles come from the poem featured at the beginning of the books.
• Lonely Together: Sarah and Adia.
• Love at First Sight: Christopher to Sarah in Shattered Mirror.
• Love Hurts: From In the Forests of the Night:
  “Love is the strongest emotion any creature can feel except for hate, but hate can't hurt you. Love, and trust, and friendship, and all the other emotions humans value so much, are the only emotions that can bring pain. Only love can break a heart into so many pieces. ”
• Lovely Angels: Turquoise and Ravyn.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: When Jessica finds out that Siete is more her parent than anyone else.
• Magnetic Plot Device: New Mayhem is right by Concord Massachusetts, where most of the stories take place. This is probably why there are so many vampires in Concord.
• Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Dominique's reaction to Sarah dating Christopher. Gets Hilarious in Hindsight in All Just Glass when we find out that Dominique did pretty much the exact same thing.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Whether or not you're a witch doesn't have too much of an impact on whether or not you can hunt vampires - plenty of humans do it successfully.
• The Medic: The entire Smoke line.
• Mid-Season Twist: It's hard to say whether or not this really applies, since the books are so loosely connected. But there were three reveals in All Just Glass, the seventh episode of the series. The twists were that Dominique killed Sarah and Adia's father, Zach was blood-bounded to Olivia, and Dominique was a rebellious teenager.
• Mind Rape: Battles between vampires basically consist of them trying to do this to each other.
• Minored in Ass-Kicking: The entire Vida line.
• Monochrome Casting: There have been only two characters of color in the series, and both were relatively unimportant side characters.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Most of the heroines of the series are female. Also, all the living members of the Vida line are girls.
• Multi-Part Episode: Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass, although it's one of the few examples in which the two episodes have other episodes between them.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Lots of characters think this about a lot of different things. It rarely works out. For example...
  • When Jessica publishes a book featuring the real lives of a bunch of vampires, general consensus from the vampire community is that she must be killed. Aubrey is originally sent to do it, but it stops working out when he finds out that she's his Anti-Magic and he falls in love with her. So Fala decides to do it herself. This doesn't really work out either, although it comes pretty close.
  • It's deconstructed in Shattered Mirror with Dominique a couple times. She thinks she has to kill Nikolas as punishment for his killing of Elizabeth Vida, so the Vida line hunted him down for years without much success. Then, Sarah gets turned into a vampire and Dominique calls on the Rites of Kin to get her killed. Both cases result in Dominique being proven wrong, and neither Nikolas nor Sarah die.
  • Jaguar thinks this about Jeshickah, which is why he had Turquoise and Ravyn go into Midnight to kill her. Then, when Turquoise finds out that Jaguar is in Midnight, she takes a roundabout journey to decide that he has to die. She actually succeeds, for once, and without even going through much trouble.
• Must Let Them Get Away: Turquoise is forced to do this to Jeshickah at one point.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Aubrey, Lord Daryl, Jeshickah, Fala.
• New Rules as the Plot Demands: The series is hilariously inconsistent about whether vampires can shape-shift or not. In some books, such as In the Forests of the Night and Midnight Predator, vampires shape-shift all the time. In others, such as Demon in my View and Shatterd Mirror, it doesn't even occur to them, even in situations where it would really make sense to.
  • Can getting a certain shapeshifter's blood in your veins turn you into that kind of shapeshifter? It can now!
• Nice Girl: Caryn and Erin.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Rikai
• No Antagonist: All Just Glass. The only person who could possibly be considered an antagonist is Dominique, and even this is subverted by the end of the book.
  • Also, Persistence of Memory. The only antagonist seems to be Adjila's actions when Erin's mother was pregnant.
• No Ending: Due to the series's format, it's hard to write an ending that completely resolves everything - there are so many story lines that at least some have to go on.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: The only exception is the kiss that Aubrey and Jessica share in Demon in my View.
• No Romantic Resolution: Midnight Predator, and to a lesser extent, All Just Glass.
• No Sense of Humor / The Comically Serious: There are almost no jokes in the series at all. It seems that this applies to everyone, including Atwater-Rhodes.
• Non-Action Guy: Christopher, mostly. Also, Robert.
• Non-Appearing Title: There is never a mention of a "Den of Shadows" in the entire series.
  • This applies to Midnight Predator and Persistence of Memory as well.
• Not So Stoic: Turquoise throughout the course of Midnight Predator.
  • Shevaun is described to be this when she almost killed Erin's mother while she was pregnant.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: All Just Glass ends with major changes for the Vida line and vampire hunting in general… only we don't get to see them, we just hear that they're going to happen.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Turquoise and Ravyn do it to infiltrate Midnight.
• Odd Friendship: Aubrey and Fala, especially considering what happens to them at the end of Demon in my View.
• Oddly Common Rarity: It's stated multiple times that there aren't many witches still alive. If that's the case, we've seen most of them.
• Oh, Crap!: Sarah gets an internal one when she realizes that Nikolas is Christopher's twin brother.
  • It also happens to Risika when Aubrey implies that he killed Norah.
• Offing the Offspring: Dominique calls on the Rites of Kin to kill her daughter, Sarah. But she doesn't succeed.
• Only in It for the Money: Turquoise and Ravyn in Midnight Predator. Especialy Ravyn.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Turquoise purposely keeps her real name (Catherine) a secret from others. And then when she gets into Midnight, she comes up with another pseudonym so that no one will recognize her as Turquoise or Catherine.
  • Even a lot of fans forget that Risika's human name was Rachel, despite the fact that she's referred to by it for half of In the Forests of the Night.
  • What, you didn't actually think Sassy was his real name, did you?
• Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Midnight Predator ignores the resolution of everyone except Turquoise and Lord Daryl. And the only reason that it even addresses Lord Daryl is because he's dead.
• Only Sane Man: Jaguar in Midnight.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted - there's a Jessica in Demon in my View and a Jeshickah in Midnight Predator. Also, there's an Olivia in All Just Glass and Oliza in the Kiesha'ra series.
• Our Hero Is Dead: Subverted for Sarah in All Just Glass when Adia Stabs the Salad
• Our Vampires Are Different: Not only can they pass for normal humans, they can also turn into animals. Sort of. They can also walk in sunlight, although it's implied that they're naturally nocturnal. Also, they have no weakness for holy objects.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass read much more like traditional vampire novels than the rest of the series.
  • Also, Token of Darkness is the only book in the series to feature no vampires, witches, or shape shifters.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: Every single freaking savior in Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass. Except Jay. Maybe.
• Parental Abandonment: Jessica's mother abandoned her because she looked too much like Siete. It kind of makes her sound like a Jerkass when you put it that way. Or any way.
• Parental Marriage Veto: More like parental dating veto. In Shattered Mirror, Dominique didn't approve of Sarah being in love with Christopher, to say the very least.
• Pitbull Dates Puppy: Sarah and Christopher, although Christopher has his moments. Also, Sassy dating Erin.
• Plot Armour: In-universe, Shantel gives this to Jay before declaring war on Leona and wreaking havoc among the magical population.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Sarah technically died when she became a vampire, which fueled the plot of All Just Glass. Not to mention that Dominique insists on saying that she's dead, even though she's just a vampire.
• Poor Communication Kills: Pretty much fuels the plot of All Just Glass. If everyone had talked to each other from the beginning, there would be no plot.
• Power Levels: There's almost a hierarchy of powers among vampires. At least, that's how Risika sees it, though she may be an Unreliable Narrator.
• Promotion to Love Interest: Occurs to Sassy at the very end of Persistence of Memory.
• Psychic Powers: Vampires have this.
• Purple Prose: One of the criticisms that the earlier books (the ones Atwater-Rhodes wrote when she was a teenager) have gotten is that she used fancy words just to prove that she could. The later books toned toned this down some, although not very much.
• Reluctant Warrior: Sarah. Adia becomes this in All Just Glass because she has to kill Sarah or be disowned.
• Reminiscing About Your Victims: Subverted; Adjila says that he never gave Erin's mother a second thought until Erin showed up.
• The Renfield: All of the slaves in Midnight.
• The Reveal: In Shattered Mirror, we find out halfway through the book that Nikolas is Christopher's twin brother.
  • Three similar ones occur in All Just Glass when we find out that Dominique killed Sarah and Adia's father, Dominique was a rebellious teenager, and Zachary was letting Olivia feed from him.
  • There's also one in Demon in my View when we find out that Jessica is more Siete's child than anyone else's.
  • And another one in Midnight Predator when we find out that Jaguar was Turquoise and Ravyn's employer.
  • And lets not forget the one at the end of In the Forests of the Night: Risika's brother is still alive.
• Romantic Vampire Boy: Aubrey for Jessica in Demon in my View, and Christopher for Sarah in Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass. There's also Unresolved Sexual Tension between Jaguar and Turquoise.
• Rule of Threes: There are three surviving members of the Vida line - Dominique, Adia, and Sarah.
• Scars Are Forever: Turquoise still has scars from her slavery with Lord Daryl.
  • Sarah still has the scars from when Nikolas wrote his name in her arm with a knife.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Happens a lot throughout Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass:
  • Sarah doesn't kill Christopher and Nikolas when she gets the chance because she thinks it's wrong.
  • Then, Adia stabs the salad instead of killing Sarah.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Turquoise in Midnight Predator when she leaves Midnight.
• Secret Relationship: Sarah and Christopher have a sort of one (although it's more of a Will They or Won't They?). It lasts about as long as you might think.
• Shapeshifter Showdown: Happens between Risika and Aubrey at the end of In the Forests of the Night.
• Shout-Out:
  • In All Just Glass, Nikolas and Kristopher take Sarah to see the musical Wicked.
  • One of the books is named after Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory.
• Shown Their Work: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes got a degree in psychology during the Kiesha'ra period, and it really shows in Persistence of Memory and Token of Darkness.
• Single-Target Sexuality: This applies to everyone who gets a romance in the series. In other words, Sarah, Chirstopher, Aubrey, and Jessica.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: After stalking Jessica for a while, when Aubrey finally has an open confrontation with her… they kiss.
• Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: Most of the vampires other than Lord Daryl and Jeshickah are on the friendly side. Kaleo and Aubrey are neutral.
• So What Do We Do Now?: One of the major elements of All Just Glass is what would happen if Romeo and Juliet opened their coffins, came back to life, and said, "Now what?"
• Spin-Off: The Kiesha'ra series is the Type 11, More Popular Spin Off of this series. There's also the upcoming Maeva'Ra trilogy.
• Stab the Salad: This is how Sarah managed to fake her death in All Just Glass. Well, she really was the one stabbed, it just didn't hit anything vital.
• Staking the Loved One: Sarah comes this close to doing this to Christopher in the end of Shattered Mirror.
  • Averted again in the end of All Just Glass with Adia and Sarah.
  • Played straight this time in All Just Glass when we find out that Dominique killed Sarah and Adia's father.
• Stalker with a Crush: Aubrey to Jessica in Demon in my View, although it didn't start out this way. Aubrey to Risika in In The Forests of the Night going by this analysis.
• Star-Crossed Lovers:
  • Shevaun (vampire) and Adjila (triste) whose respective makers and communities disapprove of their Interspecies Relationship.

• Supervillain Lair: Whether or not the 'supervillain' part really applies or not is debatable, but Nikolas has a really nice house.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: There's nothing to stop witches or vampire hunters to intrude on vampire get-togethers.
• Take Me Instead: When Brina comes looking for her lady's maid, Jay offers to come "help out for a while" rather than risk Midnight coming after his family and SingleEarth because he was the one who freed Pet.
• Taking the Bullet: In one of the more touching moments of Demon in my View, Anne lets herself be killed instead of Jessica, showing that despite their dysfunctional relationship, they really did care about each other.
• That Was Not a Dream: Often, Erin and Shevaun saw each other's memories in dreams.
• Title Drop:
  • Shattered Mirror comes from a poem that Nikolas gave to Sarah.
  • All Just Glass comes from something Sarah said in a flashback.

• Two-Act Structure: Shattered Mirror is act one, and All Just Glass is act two.
  • The first four books could be called act one, and the last five could be called act two.
• Tyke Bomb: All the witches that fight vampires, and some (but not all) vampire hunters.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Jaguar and Turquoise in Midnight Predator.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When Risika and Aubrey face off at the end of In the Forests of the Night, most of the vampires in the Bad Guy Bar just carry on like it's a normal occurrence.
• Urban Fantasy: Technically, all of them, although Midnight Predator doesn't really show many urban elements until the very end.
• Vampires Are Rich: Aubrey, Christopher, and Nikolas are, anyway. Risika probably isn't.
• Vampire Hunter: Most witches, other than the Smoke line. There are also human vampire hunters, such as Turquoise and Ravyn.
• Villain World: New Mayhem and Midnight.
• Violence is the Only Option: Deconstructed. Dominique seems to think violence is the only way to deal with vampires, but by the end of All Just Glass, she's proven wrong.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Vampires and shape-shifters.
• Was Once a Man: Vampires in general.
• We Used to Be Friends: Christopher and Nikolas.
• What Could Have Been: According to Word of God, there were around 5 books that were written before In the Forests of the Night that were never published. One was lost entirely after Atwater-Rhodes got a computer virus, and the others are probably still sitting around in her computer.
• What Is Evil?: The whole theme to Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass is asking if vampires, witches, both, or neither are evil.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: After Sarah is turned into a vampire, Dominique refuses to admit that Sarah still exists, and wants to kill "the creature that replaced her".

• White-and-Grey Morality: Risika is definitely good, but Aubrey is more of an Anti-Villain. The same thing applies to Turquoise and Jaguar in Midnight Predator, although it's zigzagged somewhat in that Lord Daryl (and probably Jeshickah) really are evil.

• Who's Your Daddy?: A major plot point of Demon in my View for Jessica.
• Will They or Won't They?: Most of Sarah and Kristopher's relationship consisted of this.
• World of Action Girls: Almost all of the women are some form of badass, even if it's just a Badass Pacifist (Caryn), or an Action Survivor (Jessica). The only two exceptions are Nissa and Erin.
• Working Title: In the Forests of the Night was originally going to be named "White Wine", as it was a follow-up to Atwater-Rhodes's (unpublished) novel "Red Wine".
  • Demon in my View was originally titled "Bitter Life".
• You Are Grounded!: Dominique grounds Sarah after she finds out about Christopher and Nikolas. She doesn't listen, of course.
• Your Vampires Suck: Averted in Demon in my View. In fact, it probably would've turned out better for Jessica if her vampire books sucked - instead, they were so accurate that vampires tried to kill her for releasing personal information about their lives without permission.

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