In the Forests of the Night
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In the Forests of the Night (Den of Shadows, #1)
by
3.77 of 5 stars
By day, Risika sleeps in shaded room in Concord, Massachusetts. By night, she hunts the streets of New York City. She is used to being alone. But... read full description

reviews

Dec 16, 2008
Susan rated it: 5 of 5 stars
Well...So far this book is switching between the present, and 1701.
A vampire girl is telling you all the in's and out's about being a vampire. And disproving the myths we humans made out of thin air.
Then she starts to flash back to when she was alive, 300 years ago. She was killed when a very powerful vampire, who had been attacked by her brother, decided to choose her as her next victim. As payback for the what her brother had done to her.
After she was killed sh More...
2 comments like (3 people liked it)
Oct 16, 2008
Violet rated it: 4 of 5 stars
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0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Dec 02, 2009
BarkLessWagMore rated it: 2 of 5 stars
Read this one in a day (it's only 147 pages after all) and though it was interesting it wasn't all that memorable.

In the Forest of the Night contains only 147 pages and those pages are filled with big fonts and lots of white space.

Risika is a 300 year old vampire who was turned and torn from everything she loved when she was only seventeen. The story flips back and forth between present day and the time when Risika was a mortal on the eve of her change.

I thou More...
0 comments like (2 people liked it)
Nov 04, 2009
Genie rated it: 4 of 5 stars
Once she was a young girl named Rachel, that was until she was turned by a vampire named Ather in the year 1701. Risika is now three-hundred-year-old vampire who doesn't look a day over 17. By day, Risika resides in Concord, Massachusetts. By night she roams the streets of New York City stalking potential victims. Over the years, Risika has discovered that most of the popular myths about vampires are false. While she has managed to avoid close relationships with humans and other vampires, she s More...
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Oct 16, 2010
Samantha rated it: 5 of 5 stars
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Jun 12, 2010
Jenny rated it: 3 of 5 stars
This book is in a set of four books by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes called the Den of Shadows Quartet. Each book is just over a hundred pages, and all are vampire based.

This is the first book in the set. It is a story about Rasika, a three hundred year old vampire. She is very powerful, very beautiful, very strong, and eternally seventeen. We hear her story through flashbacks to 1701 as she remembers her human life, conversion, and development as a vampire. An enemy from the past, a v More...
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Oct 21, 2009
Heather G rated it: 3 of 5 stars
Can't get into the characters. Written a little strangely...but...

The premise is just interesting enough to have me want to see how the second book continues. If the second one isn't at least some improvement I'll probably skip the others..

And a very very quick read.

I don't do this often but I changed the stars on this one-- I just found out the author was 13 when she wrote this book-- that made me see it in a different light!
0 comments like (2 people liked it)
Apr 18, 2011
Nick rated it: 3 of 5 stars
Really deserves an extra half star, but not quite a fourth full star. Very good, very short, amazing for how young the author was when it was written. There were problems with the development of the characters. The length of the book didn't really permit any. Also, the central character [Risika] seemed a little slow on the uptake, spending 300 years figuring out what the reader had no trouble figuring out, that one of the other characters was probably not more powerful than Risika.
After r More...
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Nov 12, 2011
Ginnie rated it: 4 of 5 stars
This book is indeed a really quick read. You basically go through it like water, but I must agree there are a lot of questions that go unanswered. This book is about Risika a 300 year old female shape-shifting vampire who is seeking revenge. She is still realizing who she is, even though it isn't hard to figure out that she is special. The setting goes back and forth from present to her past. I did like that at least it explained how she became a vampire and why she seeks revenge. Which I believ More...
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Jul 26, 2011
Samantha rated it: 5 of 5 stars
I was extremely impressed by this book especialy given the age of the author when she wrote it.
I sat down and burned through it while my husband replaced the door handle on my truck. It was intriguing, intense. and gripping. When I had originally gone to the library I had gone to pick up Shatter Glass, but then found out it was the third book. So I just snagged the other two as well now that I finished all three in about two days I am stuck on a waiting list for books four and five: Midnigh More...
11 comments like
Dec 26, 2009
Larissa rated it: 2 of 5 stars
I picked up In the Forests of the Night at the same time that I found Vivian Vande Velde's Companions of the Night and read both books within weeks of each other. This title, however, did not stand up well to competition. But rather than launch into the dissection, I'd rather point out that the book was published when Atwater-Rhodes was 13 years old, and for a vampire novel written by a 13 year old, it's pretty damn good, or at the very least, peppered with a rather lot of small endearments. Atw More...
2 comments like (1 person liked it)
Jul 20, 2009
Ashley rated it: 5 of 5 stars
In The Forests Of The Night is about a girl named Rachel who gets turned into a vammpire because she signed the devils book. Her blood mother, the person who made her a vampire, gave her a new name because shes a new person. Her new name is Risika. Risika wants to kill Aubrey, another vampire made by the same blood mother, because he killed her twin brother. Aubrey also hates Risika because she hunts in his territory.

While I read this book a made a text to text connection. Aubrey is More...
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Jan 06, 2010
Linda rated it: 3 of 5 stars
Easily readable on bus ride to and from the city, this book is quite a pleasant retreat after seeing all the romantic vampire novels which have a tendency to romanticize the vampires a tad (or a lot) too much, eventually turning them into shining, immortal knights. This one deals with the not-always-so-noble inner world of one of the "good" vampires. As a mostly inner monologue it's written in quite a simple language, that can be read through without distractions and quickly. However t More...
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Oct 10, 2011
Kat rated it: 4 of 5 stars
Goodreads just recommended to me a book by Atwater-Rhodes, and I had a flashback to how much I enjoyed this book when I was in middle school.

What I remember: a strong female protagonist, shapeshifting vampires, general incivility in the vampire populace, and good old fashioned revenge.

This was a story I encountered long before the trope of 'stuffy moralizing vampire falls in love with teenage girl' nonsense. At least, I don't remember any of that. But I do remember scen More...
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Oct 22, 2009
Roger rated it: 5 of 5 stars
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2 comments like
May 30, 2011
Night rated it: 1 of 5 stars
I didn't understand this book. What point did it have? Mostly it just talked about a vampire chick and about her past, how she got turned in to a vampire, and her feud with her arch-enemy, Aubrey. I'm sorry, but despite Atwater-Rhodes age, her writing SUCKED. I'm the same age the author when she published In the Forests of the Night, and even I can write better than she can! (I'm sorry if I sounded full of myself there, but its what my sister said) You can tell she probably wrote it in a couple More...
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Nov 10, 2011
Jennifer rated it: 1 of 5 stars
Midway through the Forests, the lead character - Rachel? Risika? MarySue? - poses the question: "What happens to the damned when they die?" Well, sweetie, they end up in novels like this. Atwater-Rhodes shows us more of a snapshot than a plot here, and it's the kind of pic that ends up gracing a MySpace profile. Credit for being marginally better than her second novel. Demerits for attempts at literary pretension without the skillz to back it up. (C'mon, Blake's Tyger? That's all you' More...
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Nov 28, 2011
Olivia rated it: 2 of 5 stars
This month I've been re-reading Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' Den of Shadows Series.

I first read "In the Forests of the Night" about 11 years ago, a bit after it first came out. I didn't remember too much about it apparently, because reading it again was like reading it for the first time (same with the others). That said, it's a light, short read, only 150 pages. I read it in a few hours. I remember liking it more a decade ago, though.

The problem I have with it is More...
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Aug 17, 2009
Arthur rated it: 5 of 5 stars
Risika plans her vengeance of Aubrey who had taken so much from her.
But meanwhile she is a vampire who is willing to live outside from the others of her kind-the other vampires. She learns of other supernatural beings that exist. Most of those are witches called Triste. She is haunted by the past and mostly at the moment she died before becoming a vampire. She also remembers her family life was destroyed by her death. She now fills her time loving her immortality although technically she’s More...
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Jun 19, 2010
Sue rated it: 5 of 5 stars
This little book was a real surprise. At least for me. I knew it was about vampires, but was trully expecting it to be along the lines of the usual paranormal drivel that seems to abundantly out there right now. Trully Amelia Atwater-Rhodes was striving to get you to actually think of what a vampire is, and what makes them so alluring to everyone out there. To me, it was reminescent of what Ann Rice tried to portray in her character Lestat - the tragedy of what put them there in the first pl More...
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Dec 19, 2011
Sarah rated it: 3 of 5 stars
This book was good, but far too short. It is book #1 of a 7 book series. My library has all the books and I will definitely read the rest. I think that at 147 pages of large print with huge margins, the books could have been combined to make it more worthwhile. I read this in less than a day including working an 8 hour shift and finished it at 6:30pm. A VERY quick read!
The book is about a 300 year old female vampire. She often reflects on her life just before and just after she was c More...
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Sep 08, 2009
Olean Public Library rated it: 4 of 5 stars
I have yet to find another author quite like this one. Her work is clean, clear-cut, and quite well polished for a writer of her age. I enjoyed her work, and she did well with describing how people’s mannerisms were at the start of the 18th century. She also went into great detail about her characters, their surroundings, and the emotions that they were emitting. I do wish the book had been a bit longer, if only for the fact that I didn’t want it to end. Her vampires are sure to come alive, More...
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Nov 20, 2011
Pretty in Fiction rated it: 4 of 5 stars
This review was originally posted on Pretty in Fiction.

Title: In the Forests of the Night
Author: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Publisher: Laurel Leaf(An Imprint of Random House Books For Young Readers
Publish Date: May 9th 2000
Rating: 4.5

In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes tells the story of Risika. She was turned into a vampire nearly three hundred years ago. And even though she hunts and kills, she can't seem to escape the morals of her p More...
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Apr 20, 2011
Pamela rated it: 5 of 5 stars
Of all the Den of Shadows books that I read, this is the worse. I don't think there's a plot in this book, or at least I didn't see one. The following books are great, though....

Second time I read it: Okay, I just finished reading this a while ago and my opinion on it is quite different from what is written above. This book is a bit philosophical but it doesn't answer most of the questions. It's actually a really GREAT book and the narrator, Risika, has a very strong character that s More...
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Oct 12, 2011
Kayla rated it: 4 of 5 stars
I was extremely impressed to learn that the author wrote this book when she was only thirteen. It is very well-written and not just for her age. Despite the novel's short length and the fact that the story only spans a few days, the main character, Risika, was nicely fleshed out. We got to know her story about how she was changed into a vampire when the book would flash back to 1701, the last year Risika was human, and then we get her revenge story in the present time.

What I thought More...
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Jul 20, 2011
Amelia rated it: 3 of 5 stars
Originally posted on The Authoress: Book Review and More.


This is why I don’t read short books. Given, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes has noteworthy talent when it comes to writing, especially at the age she wrote this particular story. However, I’m the type of reader who likes good long, hardy books. It took me all of two collective hours to read this book and I didn’t really get a lot out of it. Risika’s character was well defined however and Aubrey was an effective creep. But there More...
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Dec 11, 2009
Candice rated it: 2 of 5 stars
Good book to escape for awhile. Kept me interested... as far as literary merit. Don't hold your breath. Very juvenile. However, with that being said, it fits the audience (YA). My teenage students loved it. We read it as a book club here at the school. The author was a young girl when she wrote this and considering that, it is very good. She did a great job keeping the story interesting and offering flashbacks to the past to help the reader make sense of the present. Pretty good for a y More...
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Oct 10, 2010
Rebecca rated it: 5 of 5 stars
Wow. This book was definitely a good one. For starters it was a vampire book that had guts. It wasn't just soft and light and romantic like most of the vampire books I've read lately. There was a very good storyline.
The way this story is written is great. I think that Amelia Atwater-Rhodes uses great descriptive words. The flow of the story worked really well and I loved how it flicked back and forth between the present and the past.
I loved the characters. Risika is great. I found her More...
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Jan 08, 2010
Issam rated it: 3 of 5 stars
In the Forests of the Night is a story about a 300 year old vampire, Risika, who deals with familiar characters arriving from her past human life. It is by no means a revolutionary tale, or a type of vampire story that you have not read before. On the most part, it is also pretty predictable, but at less than 200 pages, it is still an interesting well told story, which keeps an exciting pace all the way through.

Of course, what's really the most amazing thing about this book is that t More...
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Dec 16, 2008
Immortal rated it: 2 of 5 stars
I wanted to like this book and will likely continue with the series now that I know the author was only 13 when she wrote this. Wow! Compared to others I've picked up lately I found this difficult unengaging and tough to stay focused on. Perhaps that's simply because I am a lover and artist with a strong appetite for discovery and adventure whereas this book may be 85% anger, misery, pain and failure. I have enough of that in life ;p so my books need bring something of change from that to adven More...
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