TL;DR dream magic and teenage recklessness
TBR #1210 / 1097 (Nov 12, 2014)*
finished 3/18/16
*Goodreads likes to make me TBR different versions of the book when I only wanted it on there once. The audio version was #1097, but the hardcover was #1210. I need to revise my TBR to weed out these copies.
I read Gier's Ruby Red trilogy about three years ago (good lord I didn't realize it was that long ago) and it was kind of hit or miss for me. I don't remember liking it as much, at least in the beginning, but I do like the series overall. I have a feeling the Silver Trilogy is going to be the same way. (Is the whole name of the trilogy supposed to be italicized? Just "Silver"? I have no idea.)
The narration style is very unique to Gier. I don't think I liked it when I first read Ruby Red, but I think this is one of the few times where I distinctly remember an author's style. Part of it might have to do with it being translated from German -- I'm assuming that fiction written in German has a different rhythm than fiction written in English, and I'm curious about how they compare.
Honestly, the plot took a while to get going. The characters and the intrigue were compelling enough to continue reading on, but I felt like I was going in pretty blind. It was past the halfway mark before anything about the dreams was explained. The story felt unstructured and slow-ish for most of the book and then the end was completely different. I don't think it was done poorly, but I would've liked to have that balanced out better.
I think there were more characters than necessary. They'll probably be important in the next two books, but I had trouble keeping a lot of them straight. (There's actually a character list at the back of the book. That's not all that promising.) The only descriptions I remember of characters is that at least two boys in the quartet were blond and had "angelic" or "honey-like" hair. Most of the characters blend together in my head tbh ;;
Also, as a minor spoiler, Anabel's character development (of sorts) kinda came out of nowhere. She wasn't much of an active character for most of the book and the climax / final few chapters really confused.
The transitions between chapters were also difficult to figure out sometimes. A lot like The Wrath and the Dawn, where the cues for how much time has passed are a couple paragraphs in rather than at the beginning. I think this is more of a personal complaint of mine than a negative aspect of the narration. Dream a Little Dream's transitions were easier to figure out, at least.
I didn't bookmark many geographic cues OTL They mention in the first couple chapters that Ernest lives northwest of London. Or maybe in the northwest of the city itself. Not really sure. Highgate Cemetery plays a fairly important part, and is somewhere relatively near Frognal Academy, so I found a map of the immediate area.
I also learned that the blog featured a couple times in the book is a real website! I'm assuming it's a promotional page for the series, but there aren't any links to other promotional pages. And I can't read German. Liv and Anabel's names showed up and that's about all I understood.
I'm most likely going to read the next book once it's out in English. I'm curious about how the story is going to continue on after the near-180 turn the last couple chapters took. I'm not content with how it was "resolved" (temporarily) and I wanna see what other trouble the four boys and Liv can get themselves into. Hopefully the blurb for the next book will be more helpful.
(I know I complain about blurbs giving away too much, but this one gave away too little. Or actually, it did well with not revealing anything past the inciting incident, but the actual plot of the book was very "... where did this come from")
TL;DR I wasn't as impressed as I was hoping, but based on my experience with the Ruby Red trilogy, I won't give up on the series just yet.
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