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The Silence Of Six (2014)

by E.C. Myers(Favorite Author)

4.17 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0996066624 (ISBN13: 9780996066624)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Adaptive Books

review 1: Note: The author is a dear friend. That said, I still think his book is very good. (His Andre Norton award for a previous work would back me up here.)This is a taut, compelling thriller without a lot of the stupidity that comes along with many thrillers. Some of it might be because it's a YA novel, so the protagonist doesn't really have the option of being an ex-CIA assassin who can kill 30 mooks with a spoon and then have sex with eight women. But a lot of it's just because Myers is a good writer. The teenage hero is a believable kid; also nice, his potential love interests are also believable and interesting people in their own right. There's perhaps a bit of wish fulfillment--the kid's a brilliant hacker and also a great soccer player with a cute girlfriend. But they're... more not unreasonable accomplishments and it's believable that a nice, smart, athletic guy would be able to attract a nice, smart, attractive girl. Max is a genuinely decent person, if prone to the confusion and sometimes bad decisions inherent to any teenager.It's a little chilling that the conspiracy he discovers doesn't actually sound that far-fetched, given some of the facts that have come to light in the last few years. I did find some of the points at which shadowy agents manage to get on his trail a little confusing, overly convenient, or far-fetched, but for the most part, it seems reasonable that a teenager might have some trouble evading trained police. Overall, characters behave like intelligent people, sinister government conspiracies play out not that dissimilarly to how they've played out in real life, and technology is not stretched to the breaking point. Which puts this above 90% of the thrillers ever written. And did I mention the multiple believable, intelligent, likeable women?
review 2: Unlike many YA novels I've read (though I imagine this problem is not confined to YA), The Silence of Six does a really nice job walking the line between technobabble that non-coder-teens would find offputting and "bam, magic!" sort of unexplained computing concepts that come off as unrealistic. As a programmer, I've rolled my eyes hard at "hackers" in YA books before, but in this one I can actually tell that the author did his research.The pacing is good for a thriller, and the characters are well drawn. It's a really nice standalone novel, and I think that it also brings up ethical issues related to surveillance and hacking without being too preachy. less

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