Product Description

Once there were three worlds, each with their own people. Then, fleeing out of the void, on the edge of extinction, came the Charon. And the balance changed for ever. With A SHADOW ON THE GLASS, Book One of A View from the Mirror, a major new fantasy epic begins. Karan, a sensitive with a troubled past, is forced to steal an ancient relic in payment for a debt. But she is not told that the relic is, in fact, the Mirror of Aachan, a twisted, deceitful thing that remembers everything it has seen. Llian, meanwhile, a brilliant chronicler, is expelled from his college for uncovering a perilous mystery.Thrown together by fate, Karan and Llian are hunted across a world at war, for the Mirror contains a secret of incredible power. More information on this book and others can be found on the Orbit website at www.orbitbooks.co.uk

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67112 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 608 pages

Customer Reviews

A mind-blowing start to a disappointing series.
This was the very first Irvine book I ever read and to this day it remains one of my favorite books of all time. The characters are well developed and the plot is exceptionally involved. Unfortunately, some people may be put off as this book has a rather slow start, however, once it gets going you will not be able to put it down for hours! Irvine gives his characters huge scope and manages to develop all of them to a remarkable extent, while at the same time keeping the story going, unlike in so many other books when one comes at the expense of the other.
The story follows Lliam and Karan, the one a chronicler (a sort of poet/ scribe) the latter a poor landowner. Karan is coerced into stealing the mirror of the Archim, and there the story begins. Lliam is the archetypal anti-hero, while Karan is halfway in between. In this first book, the characters compliment each other well and, by the end of the book you will find yourself halfway to your local library or bookshop to read the next in the series.
If there is any criticism I would make, it is that Irvine advances his characters too much in this one book, and therefore is forced to make them regress back to what they were at the begining at the start of the second book. This makes the latter books in the series very dissapointing and almost as if they were in a different series. Therefore, while I would definitely advise you to read this book, I would also suggest that you think twice before buying any of the later books in the series, which are, at best, dissapointing.

Great Potential Wasted
The premise for the world is great, it has the "history" and soundly thought out base to back up what should have been a great novel. It is disappointing on almost every other level of being a story, however.

Plotline: would be good, but not all that much happens - I won't sum it up here, but it *can* be summarised in 3 sentences without missing much.

Narritive: there is, as someone else said, too much time spent on the "between the action" scenes - yet another example of a travel guide for a fantasy land. The author has "let's cover the whole map" syndrome as well.

Thought lines: the author doesn't seem to have grasped that sudden unexpected changes in the line of thought that he is writing is not appreciated by the reader - luckily this is only apparent at the start, he seems to have worked himself out of this annoying trait by the half-way mark.

Character point of view: most authors tell a story consistently from one character's point of view until they make a clear change (such as a blank line, new chapter, etc) to another point of view. This author will gardually shift from one to the next, giving the thoughts of one character in one paragraph and the thoughts of another in the next (and in one appalling case, two characters' thoughts in the same paragraph). This leads the reader to at first become confused after the switch and then, once they realise what has happened, they have been broken out of their immersement in the world. Poor style.

Introduction of modern words - oddities appear every now and then totally jarring with the theme that the author has worked so hard to immerse the reader in. It pulls the reader out and disturbs the reading experience.

Characters: mostly good development but occassional behavior seems out of place. I'd say that the characters are pretty average for this genre - nothing special.

All-in-all, it's an OK read - not bad enough to make me stop reading midway through - but given this four-book series, I'm not going to read anymore from this author.

Oh... an advance warning - the plotline for the second book is even worse. The ending of the second book is easy to guess once you've read about half of this book, the middle is obvious from the start of the second. Only the start of the second is unguessable.

Do you really want to waste your money buying four books that seem to get progressively worse? I'd not start. I would recommend to go to a bookshop, read the first chapter there and then to only buy this book if you *really* like that.

Good premise, but execution is dull
All the elements of a good start to a fantasy series are here: a well-thought out world, clever plot devices, and an easy-to-read writing style. But something just doesn't work. Usually in this type of novel, you'll find lots of dramatic, plot-advancing moments, separated by transition periods. This author, however, seems to focus endlessly on the transition periods. Long, long stretches of text where characters struggle across the wilderness waiting to be caught, or sit captive in enemy fortresses waiting for something to happen...the plot is good, but there just isn't enough of it in any given chapter to keep the attention. A pity, because I think the basic idea is excellent. Worth giving it a try, but not if something better is available.