Reviewed by Roberta
TITLE: The Silvers
AUTHOR: J. A. Rock
PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing/Anglerfish Press
LENGTH: 346 Pages
Release Date: July 10, 2016
BLURB:
What humans want from the Silver Planet is water. What they find is a race of humanoids who are sentient, but as emotionless and serene as the plants and placid lakes they tend.
B, captain of the mission, doesn’t believe that the “Silvers” are intelligent, and lets his crew experiment on them. But then he bonds with Imms, who seems different from the others—interested in learning, intrigued by human feelings. And B realizes that capturing, studying, and killing this planet’s natives has done incalculable damage.
When a fire aboard B’s ship kills most of the crew and endangers Imms, B decides to take him back to Earth. But the simplicity of the Silver Planet doesn’t follow them. Imms learns the full spectrum of human emotions, including a love B is frightened to return, and a mistrust of the bureaucracy that wants to treat Imms like a test subject, even if they have to eliminate B to do it.
(Note: This is a revised second edition, originally published elsewhere.)
REVIEW:
OH MY LANTA, I’m not even sure how I feel about this book. Given the recent events in the world today and then reading this story…it was rough on me.
There are some warnings in this story that I need you to be aware of in case any of these are triggers for you:
Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Emotional Abuse and Explicit Violence.
The first part of this book…was horrible. There was violence and torture and…I just couldn’t even. I sat there and just wanted to cry. My heart hurt reading the first part of this book. To see the way in which we, humans feel that it’s justified to hurt someone else…just tore my heart up. The worst part…that what was written down…that is most likely what would happen. It still hurts me to write this, days later.
Imms is a from the Silver planet and golly…I just love him. I love everything about him. I have to say that seeing his home world and the other Silvers…it was amazing, breathtaking to think of these sentient beings who are in all ways, peaceful. They have rules regarding how they do things, but…Imms’ home world just seems so cool to me. These beings are just living their lives and here come these humans who at first…seem ok, but then…show their true colors and hurt, torture and kill these wonderful beings…they are like nope…done. We want Nothing to do with them, and Imms the sneaky lil guy wants to talk to his friend, Grena and his life changes from that moment on. This is Truly Imms’ story.
The second part of this book, well…I’m not sure if it got better or I just hardened my heart…that’s not to say…WTF is happening here. I mean, we get to see how everyone is this book is messed up. Maybe messed up isn’t the word…flawed. It showed how we as humans are flawed. We sometimes try our very best to do the right thing and yet, we fail sometimes. I like that no character is perfect in this story. They all have issues that they must deal with and overcome.
The bright spot for me was Imms. I don’t know why I liked him as much as I did. I felt for him. I felt that he was so damn smart and yet, he is so damn naïve to the inner and outer workings of humans. I really just wanted to hide him away from all of those people. But, Imms adventure on Earth really made me take such stock of how we are as humans. We are flawed. We hurt one another. Some we do because we can and some because we choose to look the other direction. We become complacent in just looking forward and not see what is going on.
Imms showed the most growth of all in this story and I have to say, that as much as this story hurts my heart, it also made me think. It made me see that we can grow and change and sometimes, it takes someone else to see that we are more than what we think we are. I enjoyed watching Imms watch humans and see analyze and observe us. Imms is really the heart of this story is about and I have to say…it was well worth feeling uncomfortable reading this book just to get a chance to see him and watch him grow.
This book hurt me and yet, it made me think. It made me process who we are as human beings. I have to say that while reading this book, I was angry…a lot!! Yet, this book also made me think and it showed me sides of human nature that I didn’t like. This book is thought provoking and it made me sad, but I’m glad that I read it.
RATING: 
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