"What did you see, when you looked into the mirror?"
The Sister Verse and the Devouring Glass is the second book in the Sister Verse series by Amelie C. Langlois. It continues the story of Diana and Elliot as they join up with a teenage girl named Kaylee, who was forced to flee from the Lord in White, and a wanderer named Farah, who they recruit in order to infiltrate Lao-Va and retrieve the Devouring Glass. Meanwhile, Singer attempts to piece together the remnants of the Crest in his war against the darklings.
The avalanche of Gorn and Mind Screw continues as the past of the Dreadlands is revealed, along with the past of its characters.
The sequel to The Sister Verse and the Talons of Ruin.
The Sister Verse and the Devouring Glass contains examples of:
- Apocalyptic Log: The logs from the Carcosa survey team, all of whom are driven to a paranoid insanity by whatever lives there. Also applies to the Crest special operators trying to infiltrate Lao-Va, who were likely tortured until they became darklings.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: This seems to be what’s happening to Elliot, who apparently had no problem showing a fourteen-year-old girl how to execute someone with the handgun he just bought for her. Even Diana finds it unlike him.
- Dark World: The Shadow Realm is a surreal reflection of reality where everyone's shadow self resides, and everything is made from a viscous ink.
- Driven to Suicide: Diana essentially tries to kill herself by obliterating her shadow. It doesn’t work, but the only thing keeping her from violently destabilizing is her armor.
- Eldritch Location: Lao-Va is a sentient, living organism that changes its architecture depending on who’s inside it, and how much it wants to screw with them. Honorable mentions go to Carcosa, the Lunar Fortress, and basically the entire Dreadlands.
- The End of the World as We Know It: In the final chapter, the world starts to disintegrate, signifying the coming end of Diana’s story, and supposedly that of all creation.
- Gorn: As soon as the party gets to Lao-Va, things get wet.
- Lost Technology: Singer spends most of the book recovering the Crest infrastructure so he can manufacture an army of drones.
- Magic Wand: Arthur Wilbury uses one of these to cast a variety of spells, such as summoning black holes, transmuting terrain, and projecting blasts of kinetic energy.
- Mind Rape: The fate of Veronica, who summoned the Lord in White in order to become a darkling, without knowing that psychopaths are useless to it.
- Misery Builds Character: Everyone goes through their own grueling trial in Lao-Va until they finally accept or destroy their shadows, granting them a better understanding of who they really are.
- Shapeshifting: Used by the Lord in White to assume the party’s appearance, and kill everyone in Kaylee’s high school, making Diana and the others wanted fugitives.
- Shout-Out: Diana and the others start actively looking for references in order to distinguish their own actions from those that were written for them, to little success. These include: Aliens, The Hunger Games, The King in Yellow.
- The Sociopath: Veronica, who tries to sacrifice Kaylee and her sister as her act of passion in the darkling rite.
- Surreal Horror: Even the comparatively mundane parts of the book are weird.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: The party learns early on that they’re trapped inside the Sister Verse.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Diana notes that she’s been slowly losing it ever since she began her quest.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: The ghetto outside of Meridian, though how many of Elliot's memories were actually real is up for debate.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Whatever it is that’s living in the sewers of Lao-Va. The longer you look at them, the more their appearance reveals itself as your brain slowly adjusts to them.
