Book Review: Glass Girl
Glass Girl. Dorothy A. Winsor, Inspired Quill, May 2023, Paperback and E-Book, 250 pages.
Reviewed by Katherine Tozer.
On Emlin’s upcoming seventeenth birthday, the women of Kural’s glasshouse expect her to take a sacred oath to join them as a fully-fledged glassmaker. Despite being the craftmistress’ daughter, Emlin doubts her abilities to balance the creative inspiration she must draw from Kural’s dragon with her headstrong nature, all while fulfilling glassware orders from the other craft houses, islands, and the Drake of Kural himself.
But Emlin can focus only on justice after witnessing her mother’s murder outside the Kural City palace. Unsatisfied with the Watch’s official investigation, Emlin sets her mind to solving the crime herself. She saves evidence and sneaks reconnaissance missions into her daily errands, seeking out the places her mother last visited and interviewing the people she last saw. Her discoveries put her on a path that is dangerous, for her and everyone in the glasshouse, but necessary to their survival, craft, and island.
To uncover the truth about her mother’s murder, Emlin must weigh her loyalties and act on the difficult results. Would it ever be justifiable to break the glassmakers’ oath? Defy the palace? Will she still have a place in the glasshouse, or even on the island, if she follows her instincts? The stakes start high and get higher for Emlin and everyone she cares for as this bildungsroman novel progresses.
It would have been easy for Winsor to spend too many (or too few) pages building the world of the Dolyan Islands, but she reveals it just as needed, alongside the plot. Introducing a mysterious stranger, the scholar Addy, allows her to integrate island history and myths into a fast-moving plot. When Emlin gets an audience with the Drake’s son, Winsor weaves in the world’s politics and power dynamics.
Glass Girl is a page-turning crime novel set in a fantasy world with a dynamic teen protagonist. While satisfying, the resolution to the multiplying mysteries could be read as another beginning as much as an ending. Perhaps this isn’t the last adventure for Winsor’s Dolyan Islands. I, for one, would read the sequel.