Silver is a sweet and thought-provoking science fiction YA book. Silver is also the name of our main character, a young alien come to Earth to spy on humans and see if their world is ripe for takeover. Her job is to ‘inhabit’ the first human she meets and learn what she can – without getting too close to anyone. The founders, who lead the people on her spaceship, say that even a touch from a human will cause incredible pain.
Of course the story cannot be so simple as that. Silver is too scared to inhabit the first human she sees, and instead makes do with the second, a dog-sitter/home-help who conveniently is brand new to the family she’s staying with, and comes from another country (so it is sort of hand-wavey okay if she doesn’t know the local lingo).
What follows is quite a cute story (cute sounds dismissive, but it isn’t) about discovering what it means to be human, making mistakes and getting over it, and falling in love for the first time. I will say the romance felt more like a sub-plot to me (the cover makes it sounds like it’s the biggest love story ever) and definitely quite young YA, but that’s okay – we need some of them! The SF is interesting but may not hold together if you think about it too much (how did Silver land unaware of so many human concepts after all her training?). I enjoyed the UK setting – it felt like home.
I’d happily recommend this to any younger people wanting something with a dash of romance and a big splash of SF.
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