Silver Shadows - Review

Silver Shadows (Bloodlines, # 5)

By: Richelle Mead

Published: July 29th 2014 by Razorbill

416 pages

Genre: YA, Paranormal, Vampires, Fantasy

Source: Personal Library

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Goodreads description--Sydney Sage is an Alchemist, one of a group of humans who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the worlds of humans and vampires. They protect vampire secrets—and human lives.

In The Fiery Heart, Sydney risked everything to follow her gut, walking a dangerous line to keep her feelings hidden from the Alchemists.

Now in the aftermath of an event that ripped their world apart, Sydney and Adrian struggle to pick up the pieces and find their way back to each other. But first, they have to survive.

For Sydney, trapped and surrounded by adversaries, life becomes a daily struggle to hold on to her identity and the memories of those she loves. Meanwhile, Adrian clings to hope in the face of those who tell him Sydney is a lost cause, but the battle proves daunting as old demons and new temptations begin to seize hold of him. . . .

Their worst fears now a chilling reality, Sydney and Adrian face their darkest hour in this heart-pounding fifth installment in the New York Times bestselling Bloodlines series, where all bets are off.

Oh my goodness you guys. This was an exhausting book. If you remember, we left The Fiery Heart with Sydney being abducted by the Alchemists. We know that they’re shipping her off to re-education in attempts to purge the Moroi and dhampir sympathies (if that's even the right word) from her. And so well, neither Adrian nor Sydney start Silver Shadows in the best mind space. Sydney’s been gone for several months, I believe, when we first begin Silver Shadows. She’s mostly been kept in a solitary cell in the dark the entire time thus far. And Adrian…well Adrian’s been hitting the bottle for a good portion of that time.

You guys I struggled so much with Adrian in the first half of this book. I mean, on the one hand, his behavior fit entirely with what we’ve seen of him up until now so it wasn’t that he was behaving out of character, but on the other hand, he wasn’t behaving at the level of which I know he’s capable and of which Sydney needed him to be capable. I was screaming at him when it came to his friendship with Nina. How men can be so dense sometimes truly blows my mind. And so I was really torn about Adrian in this book. While I still like him as a character, and he redeemed himself over the latter half of the book, he just proved Rose right again and made me glad that I had been rooting for Dimitri the entire time throughout Vampire Academy.

Thankfully, Silver Shadows was a book that--although it didn’t start in such a great place--progressed in an upward trend. The characters begin to make better decisions throughout the book, the action picks up, and everything just all-around got better as the book advanced. I almost hate to make this comparison because I think this series is on a whole other level from the Lux series, Silver Shadows reminded me a lot of Origin in more ways than one. But unfortunately to explain how would be spoilerish.

As always, I love how strong Sydney is. Whereas Rose is physically strong and capable (and smart too), Sydney is mostly intellectually smart and strong (even though she held her own physically in this book as well). I just love female characters like this. She makes some difficult decisions, but she also has the good of others in her heart always. I respect her.

In typical Richelle Mead style, there is a cliffhanger which sets up the events to come for the next and final installment of the Bloodlines series, The Ruby Circle. I also can’t wait to go back and re-read this series from the beginning after finishing the last book so that I can see how Richelle Mead sets up the entire thing and the foreshadowing that she does so well from start to finish. She always puts her books in a series together like a puzzle and I can only see how everything fits together when it’s all finished.

I don’t know that I can say Silver Shadows is my favorite of the Bloodlines series. I can see where The Fiery Heart is considered the equivalent of Shadow Kiss and if that’s the case then Silver Shadows definitely felt very similar to Blood Promise but with more romance since Blood Promise was almost entirely lacking in the romance area. So if The Ruby Circle is anything like Spirit Bound then I think we’re in good shape for a spectacular ending to this series.

Silver Shadows gets 4 Stars from me. The characters grow even more throughout this book. And once the events start picking up, Silver Shadows becomes non-stop action until the very end. I hardly felt like I had a chance to breathe on the latter half of this book. I loved where Richelle Mead chose to end this one, and I’m already dying to get my hands on the final book in the series. Have you read Silver Shadows? What did you think? Let me know!