In the Forests of the Night critics. The title refers William Blake's poem "The Tyger", which appears in the beginning of the book. Atwater-Rhodes' second book, "Demon in My View", was published in 2000 when she was 16 and is the sequel to "In the Forests of the Night". "Persistence of Memory", published in 2008, makes mention and appearance of the main character's brother. According to Atwater-Rhodes' official site, The Den of Shadows, "In the Forests of the Night" is one of seven novels that she had finished writing and is only the first she ever published. The inspiration for the novel came from an assignment
The Tyger which created us. Kazin says of Blake, "Never is he more heretical than ... where he glories in the hammer and fire out of which are struck ... the Tyger". Rather than believing in war between good and evil or heaven and hell, Blake thought each man must first see and then resolve the contraries of existence and life. In "The Tyger" he presents a poem of "triumphant human awareness" and "a hymn to pure being", according to Kazin. Blake's original tunes for his poems have been lost in time, but many artists have tried to create their own versions