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A review by felyn
Silence by Michelle Sagara West, Michelle Sagara
4.0
Okay, lemme see... Young adult, necromancy, mysterious not-quite-good guys, and a ridiculously named but lovable Rotti? Yeap, alright, I'm in.
The problem is the book takes a long time to get anywhere. It's interesting, and I would definitely suggest it as summer reading for the fantasy-reading (pre?)teen in your life, but I'm not entirely sure it's as far up my alley as originally assumed.
That being said! The plot revolves around Emma and her newly awakened powers of necromancy. She doesn't know what the hell is going on, she only knows that she's having massive headaches, weird encounters with Eric (the new guy at school), and has started seeing people other people can't. Combine this with her on-going struggles with depression (She's in recovery phase when we meet her, but it is a topic that is discussed) over the death of her boyfriend, and you can see this is not an ideal thing for a high school student. She has a good heart and truly cares about the people in her life, which makes her an anomaly among necromancers, however, as she finds the "point" of her powers to be unthinkable and is driven by her desire to help the spirits she comes into contact with.
I also want to point out - and please excuse my neurotypical POV/approach here - that one of our main characters is on the Autism spectrum, and is included completely and absolutely. Michael's one of Emma's close friends, and their peer group understands that while he processes things differently, this doesn't make him "less than". It was nice to see a character on spectrum being represented in a perfectly "normal" way, without being a plot device needed to be rescued, saved, or a burden to be worked around.
The problem is the book takes a long time to get anywhere. It's interesting, and I would definitely suggest it as summer reading for the fantasy-reading (pre?)teen in your life, but I'm not entirely sure it's as far up my alley as originally assumed.
That being said! The plot revolves around Emma and her newly awakened powers of necromancy. She doesn't know what the hell is going on, she only knows that she's having massive headaches, weird encounters with Eric (the new guy at school), and has started seeing people other people can't. Combine this with her on-going struggles with depression (She's in recovery phase when we meet her, but it is a topic that is discussed) over the death of her boyfriend, and you can see this is not an ideal thing for a high school student. She has a good heart and truly cares about the people in her life, which makes her an anomaly among necromancers, however, as she finds the "point" of her powers to be unthinkable and is driven by her desire to help the spirits she comes into contact with.
I also want to point out - and please excuse my neurotypical POV/approach here - that one of our main characters is on the Autism spectrum, and is included completely and absolutely. Michael's one of Emma's close friends, and their peer group understands that while he processes things differently, this doesn't make him "less than". It was nice to see a character on spectrum being represented in a perfectly "normal" way, without being a plot device needed to be rescued, saved, or a burden to be worked around.