The Glass Demon

Starred review from April 11, 2011
Grant (The Vanishing of Katharina Linden) turns in a spectacular mix of history and horror that expertly draws from numerous genres. Obsessed medievalist Oliver Fox moves his family to a castle on the edge of a German forest in search of the Allerheiligen glass, a supposedly cursed set of stained-glass church windows lost or destroyed 200 years before. The Glass Demon, Bonschariant, said to inhabit the windows, shadows the search from the moment Fox's unhappy teen daughter Lin discovers a corpse surrounded by shattered glass. As Lin gets to know her young neighbor, Michel Reinartz, she becomes aware of the locals' hostility toward any investigation of the lost glass, while a series of uncanny incidents escalates horrifically. Skillfully mixing the strains of a dysfunctional family with the rising terror of the supernatural, Grant has produced a mesmerizing page-turner that brilliantly depicts the claustrophobic fear of a young woman grappling with the deadly secrets of the forest and the demonic nightmare lurking within.

May 1, 2011

Curl up on the couch with a few gothic fairy tales--the dark, brutal sort. Follow this with a murder mystery, deep and rich with symbolism. Then grab a young adult novel with a strong female character, Lin, with an eclectic academic upbringing. Grant (The Vanishing of Katharina Linden) rolls all of these into the shadowy corners of a secluded German forest, complete with castle ruins steeped in superstition. Lin's family is uprooted by her father's obsessive drive for academic success, which leads them on a search for the haunted windows of a medieval stained-glass master. The locals are fiercely protective of their secrets, refusing to welcome the family or answer any questions. As details about the glass are revealed, an ancient evil stalks Lin and her family. She struggles to solve the mystery before all is lost. VERDICT Page-turning and portentous, mysterious and chilling, this will attract readers who loved Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and fairy tales and legends in modern settings. [See Prepub Alert, 1/17/11.]--Jennifer Anderson, Texas A&M Univ.-Corpus Christi

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2011
Grants second novel, released barely a year after the impressive The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, is sure to cement her growing reputation as an original storyteller and elegant writer. Seventeen-year-old Lin Fox is not happy about being dragged to a crumbling castle in the middle of a forest in a rural area of Germany. Her father, a medieval scholar desperately in search of media attention, is intent on finding the famed but long-lost Allerheiligen stained-glass windows, said to be haunted by the glass demon Bonschariant. Soon after the family arrives, a series of gruesome deaths, with all of the corpses found surrounded by glass shards, spooks the town residents. Meanwhile the Fox family is also suffering from its own private dramas, ranging from anorexia to parental neglect. Grant expertly builds suspense by credibly implying that the deaths could be attributable to either supernatural or human causes. And Lin is a highly appealing narrator, at once feisty and vulnerable. With its fascinating information on medieval folklore, unique setting, and increasingly claustrophobic sense of terror, this is an exhilarating page-turner that offers a cerebral blend of horror and mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)