Yzabel / June 16, 2012

Silver Knight by Caron Rider

My rating: [rating=3]

[I got the ebook version to review through a We ♥ YA Books ARR.]

Silver Knight is a book I enjoyed reading, but that left me confused at times.

First, I must say that I liked the overall plot. It seemed intriguing at first—’a girl realizing that the priest in a certain YouTube video is actually a man she met in a former life—and it kept on being so. What could have been easily solved, and apparently is, also raises more questions and issues. Is the problem addressed in the video solved at the end of the book? Not so much, and it clearly points at a sequel and at a more complex story. I’m sure I’m not the only one who found some elements pretty fishy.

The characters I found appealing. Diana, among others, struck me as a strong enough persona, thanks to her decisions and actions in the present timeline, as well as to what was shown of her in her past lives, that nicely echo elements from the main plotline. Besides, I’ve always had a sweet spot for different readings of historical events (same with historical characters), and the stories the author conveyed here were interesting: the retelling of Helen’s fate, Alexander’s real identity (I didn’t need much to guess it, but it was still nice to read about), what happened in Pompeii… Although some might say those were contrived, I nevertheless thought them told originally enough.

However, those past lives and events were also what left me confused: I’d say there were just a little too many of them, all the more so that they were interspersed with other characters’ points of view. While those were interesting, they contributed to making the main plot difficult to follow at times, as well as having it appear a little weak (in that if you remove the parts about the past lives, there isn’t that much left, come to think of it). I understand that the ‘past lives aspect’ is an important part of the novel’s pitch, and that it’s important to have it in; it just seems to me that it was too much to chew on all at once, and that some of it might have been better kept off until the second installment.

That said, it was a good story, and I will probably read the sequel.