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A review by mygeekblasphemy
Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman
4.0
This took me an embarrassingly long time to read. A lot of that's on me, since I started it during a week of deadlines and very sudden family visits, and reading just stopped being a priority. But the book also isn't a pick-up-and-can't put-down kind of story. Which is actually fine--I generally enjoy the slower pace here, like I was wandering the Road with Izzy and Gabriel, and we didn't have to get anywhere in a hurry. Journey, not the destination, and all that. Very appropriate for a western. But I do feel like I have some problems in the last third of the book, and I think one of the main ones is that there doesn't feel like a lot of payoff. I saw one review on Goodreads noting that Izzy and Gabriel always seem to arrive after the action/horror/Big Event has happened, and I think the book might have been stronger if that wasn't always the case, especially at the end. (It's hard to talk about this without going into more spoiler-y details, which I won't be doing today.)
I like this whole world a lot. The weaving of different mythologies and magic systems is fascinating, and I'm entirely in love with the Territory. The worldbuilding works well for me, informative without ever being boring. I also really like the characters: Gabriel's probably my favorite, but I enjoy Izzy and Farron and the Devil, too, despite not spending much time with him. I enjoy the relationship between Gabriel and Izzy; it, along with just the general awesomeness of this AU world, really make the whole book for me.
Still, I do have problems. Repetition is a big one: I became very tired of hearing how mad Farron was, especially when he never struck me as terribly mad. Izzy notices the madness in his eyes, or Gabriel will call him mad, but for the sheer amount of times the word is used, I really needed a moment where Farron did something and I thought, "Holy hell, he is MAD." That really never happened. Also--and again, this is difficult without spoilers--at a certain point, it feels like Gabriel's basically repeating the same thought process over and over again, once we learn something about him. I kept thinking, "I get this, I understand, let's move on now and learn the actual details of this revelation." But we never actually get those details, which was jarring for me because, somehow, I entirely missed that this was the first book in a series. It wasn't until I reached the end and was like, "Um," that I looked it up and realized this book was not a standalone. So I'm struggling here. Some of my dissatisfaction with the end is surely because of that. But I do feel that the last third is a bit underwhelming overall.
Still. I definitely liked this book enough that I plan to read the next one. Repetition aside, it's very well written and I want to know what happens to Izzy and Gabriel.
I like this whole world a lot. The weaving of different mythologies and magic systems is fascinating, and I'm entirely in love with the Territory. The worldbuilding works well for me, informative without ever being boring. I also really like the characters: Gabriel's probably my favorite, but I enjoy Izzy and Farron and the Devil, too, despite not spending much time with him. I enjoy the relationship between Gabriel and Izzy; it, along with just the general awesomeness of this AU world, really make the whole book for me.
Still, I do have problems. Repetition is a big one: I became very tired of hearing how mad Farron was, especially when he never struck me as terribly mad. Izzy notices the madness in his eyes, or Gabriel will call him mad, but for the sheer amount of times the word is used, I really needed a moment where Farron did something and I thought, "Holy hell, he is MAD." That really never happened. Also--and again, this is difficult without spoilers--at a certain point, it feels like Gabriel's basically repeating the same thought process over and over again, once we learn something about him. I kept thinking, "I get this, I understand, let's move on now and learn the actual details of this revelation." But we never actually get those details, which was jarring for me because, somehow, I entirely missed that this was the first book in a series. It wasn't until I reached the end and was like, "Um," that I looked it up and realized this book was not a standalone. So I'm struggling here. Some of my dissatisfaction with the end is surely because of that. But I do feel that the last third is a bit underwhelming overall.
Still. I definitely liked this book enough that I plan to read the next one. Repetition aside, it's very well written and I want to know what happens to Izzy and Gabriel.