Review: Silver on the Road

Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book had a marvellous premise, interestingly woven character and excellent prose. All brought low by the plot's execution. I honestly felt like the instances where something was actually happening were few and far between. Those instances were without a fault intensely engaging and interesting. But the rest of the time was spent on what felt like aimless, purposeless wandering.

I know we are probably meant to see Iz's growth from a child who had never left Flood to a proper rider, but like in God's War, the previous book I read, we mostly just see a lot of moving around. Waking up, preparing camp, random bit of world-building, moving on, rinse, repeat. Granted, there's a point to all the moving, but the fact remains there's little to no actual advancement of the book's apparent plot for most of the book itself, the important scenes peppered in between a whole lot of nothing. And no matter how prettily written it is, it still is mostly uninteresting. Even if it compels you to read on somehow.

I'll admit, I feel a little guilty writing this. I don't know whether I am simply being too harsh on the book. Perhaps there's just some genre convention that I am missing. It is possible, as I honestly just decided to read it based on the premise and little attention was paid to anything else. But in any case, for the few interesting scenes, and the engaging characters (I loved Farron and Isobel) and the premise itself, and the hope that the second book will redeem the failing's of the first, I give it three stars.

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