Published: February 4, 2014
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Genre: Science Fiction
Series: Silvers #1
Pages: 608 (Hardcover)
My Rating: 4.0/5.0
Synopsis:
Without warning, the world comes to an end for Hannah and Amanda Given. The sky looms frigid white. The electricity falters. Airplanes everywhere crash to the ground. But the Givens are saved by mysterious strangers, three fearsome and beautiful beings who force a plain silver bracelet onto each sister’s wrist. Within moments, the sky comes down in a crushing sheet of light and everything around them is gone.
Shielded from the devastation by their silver adornments, the Givens suddenly find themselves elsewhere, a strange new Earth where restaurants move through the air like flying saucers and the fabric of time is manipulated by common household appliances.
Soon Hannah and Amanda are joined by four other survivors from their world—a mordant cartoonist, a shy teenage girl, a brilliant young Australian, and a troubled ex-prodigy. Hunted by enemies they never knew they had and afflicted with temporal abilities they never wanted, the sisters and their companions begin a cross-country journey to find the one man who can save them—before time runs out.
I was initially pitched the soon to be released second book in this series and after reading the author’s summary, I decided to go ahead and pick up The Flight of the Silvers as well. I’m very glad I did because it’s a really complex story and while the summary was both thorough and amusing, you still miss out on a lot of the context. This is a cool parallel universe sci-fi that would translate well to a television series – it’s got lots of drama, action, and bad guys from every direction.
The premise is relatively straightforward – a group of people on Earth are given bracelets that save them from the destruction of their world and are brought to a parallel Earth. These individuals gain temporal superpowers. They’re on the run/traveling to New York City where they hope to find a sanctum and some answers about their situation. This is REALLY simplifying things, but it captures the essence of the story. If you’d like a more detailed and spoiler-y summary, check out Daniel Price’s recap HERE.
The characters drive the story and without their internal and external turmoil this would be an empty and dull book. Like real people, they are both likable and painfully frustrating, they have communication issues, and sometimes they’re just buttholes. In the 600+ pages they’re allotted they manage to turn themselves into somewhat of a family unit (aside from the more intimate relationships they form). At first I really didn’t like several of them, particularly Hannah. Hannah is portrayed as this busty gal with rocks for brains that flirts with any male within seeing distance. Eventually, she develops into more than that, though she remains a hopeless flirt and the mentions of her endowments were excessive. I was fond of the others, though they were all a little annoying at times. The write and characters both seemed to settle down a bit by the end of the story, which made the reading experience much more enjoyable.
All in all, The Flight of the Silvers was a pretty cool book. If you’re looking for hard sci-fi, then you’ll be disappointed, but if you’re into parallel universes, time travel, and other fiddley timey-wimey things then this might be worth checking out. It is a very long book and it seemed to drag sometimes, especially when they were travelling, though that’s not to say nothing of importance happened! I listened to the audio version and found the narration to be of good quality and easy on the ears. I’ll be checking out The Song of the Orphans this week, where I think the action will really pick up even more.
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