Mark This Book Monday: ARC Review of Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop!!!

Hey again guys!

The second Mark This Book Monday entry of this week is one of my recent favourites and a series that has also become a firm all time favourite!

I was beyond surprised and giddy when I was approved for this one by Penguin via NetGalley (THANK YOU!!) and as an ARC it counts as part of my 105 Challenge and my books for review category!

Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Another absolute winner. What a series this is shaping up to be! Everything gets bigger and the stakes get higher but at the same time everything gets more personal and intimate! The next book cannot come out soon enough!

I must warn you all that I might end up spilling some spoilers about book 1 and 2 and probably even don't realize about it, so if you haven't started this series SHOOOO GO GRAB THE FIRST TWO BOOKS AND READ THEM! I can promise I'll try my best to not spoil anything about this one, but just in case, tread with caution!

After The Others taking things into their own hands (and paws and other apendages) and making sure the cassandra sangue were freed from their prisons and the Controller being no longer a threat, they're left with the question of how to care for the girls that have been treated only as property, have been bred and raised for prophecy and have been kept away from the outside world all their lives. And the Other and their allies are utterly unprepared to help them and deal with them.

That's where our Meg, the only cassandra sangue ever to space and make a life for herself out there is the only one that can help. Her coping mechanisms and ways to deal with stimuli and change and new things will become the template for the Others and the Inuit to help the rest of the cassandra sangue to survive.

But that's not our only plot point, we still have the Courtyard politics and the way they interact with the humans in the city and their newly formed "human pack" consisting of Meg's friends and to some extent the police task force that always interacts with them. And seems that the terra indigene have decided that they will make sure to show humans that they will protect those that treat them fairly even from their fellow humans.

We also get a deeper look at the plan hatched by the Humans First and Last movement and that's possible thanks to the personal connections that detective Montgomery unwittingly had. The plot thickens as the adagio goes and not only we discover the lies that most of the population has been fed the past months but also the reasons for the lies, how they made those lies real and although we can't know for sure yet, the suspected reasons behind it all. There's corruption, lies and murder all around the fanatism of the HFAL and their way of branding those that are not part of their movement with the "wolf lover" as a slur and as a way of discriminating against them reminded me a bit of the Nazi branding of the Jews.

It seems so easy for the humans to forget that the world they're living in is shared with the Others, but only because the Others allow it. Those living in big cities forget that not far from the city limits they're nothing but prey. We learn so much more about the whole world, from how the Others are situated around the human settlements, to a lil of information of those areas that are really wild and untouched in any way by the humans and where some of the wildest terra indigene live, those that have no knowledge or regard whatsoever for the humans.

I love how Merri Lee and Ruthie become real friends for Meg and how they help her understand her way of dealing with things as a cassandra sangue, and how they are so supportive of her. I love how they form the "human pack" and they become respected by the terra indigene for that. Simon decides that since he's got experience with humans that respect the terra indigene and want to interact with them as more than just a curiosity, he needs to protect them and show how that's a new way for both species to live.

We have two new characters added to the already extensive cast, two cassandra sangue, Jean and the girl that loves colours. Through them both we learn some new tidbits about the cassandra sangue, new ways to see their perspective about their gift/curse and the way to try and live in a place where all the rules and truths they were told no longer apply. I don't know how Anne Bishop does it, but all the characters from main to secondary are so nuanced and so well constructed! None of them seem like fillers at any point!

And the relationship between Simon and Meg... it must be one of the slowest burns in a series but it's just so right for them! The pace couldn't be faster and still be true to the characters! Simon is terra indigene and he needs to accept that he might care for a human which is a huge shift on perspective for him. And Meg... Meg is so scared of change, so unsure about everything about the outside world. Baby steps in the only way for them to progress, and I really love how they end up asking for advice about their relationship to couples, even if they don't realize what kind of advice they're really asking for!

I was immensely lucky to read this book in advance, but oh boy, this those final revelations and ultimatum, the wait for the next book is gonna be absolute torture.

This series achieves a very rare feat in which each books keeps getting better than the previous one, keeps progressing the plot and making it more complex, offering more world building, developing characters and adding new ones that never fill like fillers. All the stars to this one!!



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