Tome Thursday: The Silver Shadows

Hello everyone!

So a while back, probably in my first book blog post, I talked about some books by an author who's name is Richelle Mead (I think it was her Succubus series). I'm kind of a big fan of her vampire ones though, probably because I started reading her work when I bought the first three Vampire Academy novels, and I've been hooked ever since. It's a different take on vampire lore yet again, and a lot of hard-core vampire book fans don't like it. That's okay, because to each their own, I mean, I've read so many variations on vampires by this point that there's precious little I HAVEN'T seen, myself. But anyway, back to VA!

The six books in the first series were amazing, so imagine my surprise when the author announced she would be writing a spin-off series, again comprising of six books! This one is called Bloodlines, and man, did I fall in love with the characters there too. We get guest appearances from all our favourites from the first series, and the minor characters from there take center stage in this one. The books go, as follows, Bloodlines, The Golden Lily, The Indigo Spell, The Fiery Heart, The Silver Shadows, The Ruby Circle (out this February!). In this review, I'm going to talk about The Silver Shadows.
(image not mine)

The fifth book starts right where the fourth one left us, which is Sydney in re-education, and Adrian on a downhill spiral out of control. As with The Fiery Heart, the chapters here are written in both their perspectives. On one hand, we get to see Sydney's experience at the hands of the Alchemists, and on the other Adrian being ... well, Adrian.

Sydney goes through stages of re-education, figuring that she needs to get out of solitary confinement (or 'reflection time' as they call it ... I wonder who's more insane, vampires drinking blood or humans locking their own up into total darkness, naked?), and she meets with the other detainees, quickly learning some basic rules: you don't talk back to the 'teachers', slips or mistakes get you into purging (basically torture, on various levels), and no one gets out of there unless the Alchemists release them. But, of course, Sydney isn't having any of it - she's going to break out. Producing salt ink (which we first met back in Fiery Heart), she manages to inject some of her inmates, which would protect them from re-inking (and making them into zombies). She also goes on a couple of invisible tours through the facility. Obviously, her luck doesn't last, and she gets caught, going to some HARDCORE torture where they break her by threatening to torture her roommate, and she fesses up to using her magic. Weird fact: apparently, the Alchemists know about this magic, and have experimented on it before.

Meanwhile, Adrian is going way out of control, drinking and barely making it through classes. His mother comes to take him back to court, which gets us thinking: shouldn't she be in jail? Apparently not anymore, and she's gone back to Ivashkov Sr (who is still a douchebag), and Adrian quickly realizes their whole marriage is pretty much a sham, which sends him into an even worse situation. He parties a whole lot, going back to his pre-Palm Springs ways, until a conversation with Nina, another spirit user and someone who's fallen for him (we met her and her sister Olive back in Fiery Heart), snaps him out of it. That's also when he finally connects with Sydney in spirit dreams (side-note: Sydney, being badass, turned off the sleeping drug gas so she could reach out to her boyfriend), and this sends Adrian back to the gang. With Merry Marcus (from Indigo Spell), they start searching for the re-education center, eventually realizing it's in Death Valley, quite close to Palm Springs. They plan, go in, and definitely win the day and the lovers are reunited!

Things don't go quite smoothly though; Adrian and Sydney break off from the main getaway group and head in their own direction, ending up chased by Alchemists. As in, explosion-rocking, balcony-climbing, setting-bikinis-on-fire style chase. And let's not forget Sydney has major PTSD as well. 

Adrian finally has  a breakthrough idea, which includes ... wait for it ... marriage!

Yup, he asks Sydney to marry him, and they get everything ready in two hours, get hitched, and Jill sends a helicopter to pick them up. Only ... the Alchemists arrive first, and Sydney has to be all badass again before they can escape, while the guardians can't land (here I was sort of hoping for Dimitri Belikov aka The Russian God aka Death in a Cowboy Duster to swoop in as a one-man version of a SWAT team, but oh well). Once at the Moroi court though, we get to meet up with the Sage Alchemists again, and I wanted to gauge Sydney's father's and her sister's eyes out for what they did. The man is completely mental. Lissa rules that, as Adrian's wife, Sydney is entitled to Moroi protection, but she isn't happy with Adrian, at all. And just when you think it's all over and they can relax, the next morning brings the cliff-hanger: Jill is missing.

So now we're waiting for The Ruby Circle! Some fun facts: we got to see Carly Sage in action, and I thought she was pretty awesome. We need more of her. There was also a weird girl in glasses asking for Adrian and Sydney ... this won't end well. Just my two cents. And to top it all off, Sydney's tattoo is turning silver! I wasn't sure about the title until the very last chapters, when Adrian comments on it. Normally (for them), the golden lily goes silver only after being injected by salt ink, but it seems Sydney's magic use is doing this all on its own.

I've loved every book in this series and this one was no exception. I can't wait for the conclusion! In the meantime, what're your theories about who took Jill? Apparently, they took her from her room and her roommate dhampir didn't hear/see a thing. So it could either be Alchemists (though the retaliation is kind of extreme), magic users (could be), or those even-crazier-Alchemists that kill Strigoi for fun and games.

What do you think?

xx