Author: Daniel Price
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Publication Date: February 2014
Length: 608
Series: Flight of the Silvers (#1)
Audio or Book: Book
Reason for Discovery: ARC
I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
From GoodReads:
Without warning, the world comes to an end for Hannah and Amanda Given. The sky looms frigid white, and every airplane crashes to the ground. But the sisters are saved by three eerily beautiful strangers, who force mysterious silver bracelets onto their wrists. Within minutes, the sky comes down in a crushing sheet of light and everything around them is gone. Shielded from the devastation by their silver adornments, they suddenly find themselves elsewhere—on a bizarre alternate Earth, where restaurants move through the air like flying saucers and time is manipulated by common household appliances. Soon Hannah and Amanda are joined by four other survivors from their world. At risk from enemies they never knew they had and afflicted with extraordinary abilities they never wanted, the sisters and their new companions band together on an epic journey to track down the one man who can help them—before time runs out.
Six very different people are living their ordinary lives when a strange persons straps a silver bracelet on their wrists. A few minutes later, the apocalypse happens and the planet and everything living on it are extinguished. Those six people with the silver bracelets miraculously find themselves on a planet that looks very similar to their Earth. They have no idea why they were chosen to survive.
This is going to be a short review, because The Flight of the Silvers was sadly not the book for me and I did not finish (DNF) it. When I started reading The Flight of the Silvers, I was quite intrigued by the story. I really liked the idea of people being transported to a different version of Earth and suddenly having super powers. The story itself was pretty exciting and there was a lot of great action. I did feel like the book was written as a script (e.g., there seemed to be a lot of dialogue); however, I was okay with lots of dialogue and limited descriptions. In adventure SF, I don't expect people to be talking about their feelings as much or to be describing the world around them. Overall, it was a fairly strong first novel in a series.
The reason that I DNFed The Flight of the Silvers was that I did not like how the female characters were portrayed in the book. The readers were constantly being reminded of how large Hannah's chest was, how b*tchy Amanda was, and how unattractive Mia was. Also, two out of the three main male characters were prodigies/geniuses. When the female cop who is chasing them decides to take off her "black lacy bra" while keeping her shirt on while talking with a colleague, I had to put the book down (~50% through the book). I read an ARC, so some of these scenes that bothered me may have been toned down in the final product. I read books with stereotypical male and female characters all the time and enjoy them; however, in this book, the gender stuff that was going on just rubbed me the wrong way.
If the premise of this book sounds good, I would encourage you to give it a try. This was just not the book for me.