Release Date: February 10, 2015
Publisher: Tor Teen
Page Count: 336
Format: Hardcover
The Handmaid’s Tale meets Blood Red Road in Glass Arrow, the story of Aya, who lives with a small group of women on the run from the men who hunt them, men who want to auction off breeding rights to the highest bidder.
In a world where females are scarce and are hunted, then bought and sold at market for their breeding rights, 15-year old Aya has learned how to hide. With a ragtag bunch of other women and girls, she has successfully avoided capture and eked out a nomadic but free existence in the mountains. But when Aya’s luck runs out and she’s caught by a group of businessmen on a hunting expedition, fighting to survive takes on a whole new meaning.
Having really enjoyed the Article 5 trilogy by Kristen Simmons, The Glass Arrow was an automatic buy for me. The intriguing description coupled with an author I'd enjoyed before and a awesome cover convinced me 100% to get it and so I did. While there were some similarities to several other books and there were some parts of the plot that I felt like could have been expanded upon, it ended up being a a pretty good book that I wouldn't mind reading again sometime in the future.
The Glass Arrow is set sometime in the future (or so I'm presuming) where technology like cars have been given up for a "simpler" life and women are sold/traded/auctioned and basically treated like property. The Glass Arrow starts off in the wilderness (a.k.a woods) and then continues to The Garden (which is where girls are held before they're auctioned off) and the city. While the settings were written generally well I would have still liked to see more parts of the city like the Black Lanes. I'm not sure why but I especially liked the description of the area where Aya spent her solitary time in. She's been there so often that she has stashed away little odds and ends and has even trained a wolf. Overall, more details would have been welcomed but the settings were still more than satisfactory.
Aya, the main character is a girl who has grown up in the wilds with a small group of people that included her mother until she passed away. The book starts off with the group being attacked, several of them being killed, and Aya being captured and taken to the city. Then we read about her experience in the city, consequent escape from the city, and the rest of the events that occur. Even though Aya and the others were great, Brax was hands down my favorite "character". He was the wolf that Aya saved and raised, her only source of strength sometimes when she was stuck in solitary and was running for her life. But at the same time I felt like these characters could have been explored so much more, the Drivers and their history and customs, some of Aya's past time in the woods, the people in the city and a background on how it all came to be. Additionally, the whole buying/selling women thing was really similar to Lauren DeStefano's Wither trilogy. These two things were mainly what knocked off the one star. Once again, great characters and nice plot but not in-depth enough in my opinion.
While I'm not sure if there will be a sequel to The Glass Arrow I certainly hope there will be. There are so many possibilities that can be explored and that ending wasn't enough of an ending for me. Maybe even a short story if there won't be a sequel, just something to explore some of the many possibilities left open in the book. The Glass Arrow is a good pick for people who like YA/dystopia, the Wither trilogy, and the Article 5 books.
4/5 - Pretty good book
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