ARC Review: Silence by Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin

Silence
Author: Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin
Series: Serrated Edge (Book 9)
Publication: Baen (April 5, 2016)

Description: Teenager Staci's father has just remarried, and now she finds herself being shunted aside by her new stepmother.  Shunted all the way to the run-down and dying Maine town of Silence, in fact, and the custody of her alcoholic mother.

It gets worse.  Silence seems to be stuck in the proverbial stone age. There's no cell phone service except at the very top of a bluff outside of town, no internet except dialup, and not one familiar franchise or business. Staci's mom seems to have gotten even worse since the last time Staci lived with her. The only bright spots in the whole place are a friendly waitress at the diner, and a bookstore where she meets a gaggle of geeks and gamers.

But all is not as it seems in Silence. There are strange things moving beneath the shabby surface, terrible plots in play, and deadly players in the game, and Staci is about to find herself caught up in the middle of it all.

My Thoughts: Sixteen-year-old Staci finds herself  pushed aside when her father remarries. They send her to Silence, Maine, to live with her alcoholic mother. Silence is the town that time forgot. The weather is always gloomy; cell phones only get a bar or so when a person is at the top of Make-out Hill; the only internet is dial-up. It is quite a change for a girl who grew up in New York City.

She gradually meets some other kids and becomes part of the nerdy group that hangs out at the local bookstore playing role playing games. The store is run by a mysterious guy named Tim. She also makes the acquaintance of another mysterious guy named Dylan who rides a really cool motorcycle. Then she catches the attention of Sean Blackthorne who is the son of the richest family in town. He begins inviting her to hang out at his palatial escape where she meets his assorted cousins and his father.

She soon learns that Sean and his family are elves from the Unseleighe court who have evil plans for the people of Silence. Dylan has come to try to disrupt those plans but needs Staci's help because she has an in to the estate. He begins to teach her magic since she has some elven blood. She proves to be surprisingly adept and and independent thinker who can use the magic she knows in creative ways.

This story has adventure, danger, friendships, and even a hint of romance. Fans of the Serrated Edge series and other fans of urban fantasy will enjoy this entertaining story.

Favorite Quote:

She wasn't a soldier; she didn't have years of training or anything like that, just a few weeks of practicing magic and almost getting killed, and she had been scared to death through it all. Sometimes anger of something else cut through that fear, but that didn't change the fact that it was there. Dylan told her that brave people felt fear, and kept going despite it; if that was true, then she and her friends must have been crazy-stupid brave, with how she was feeling.

I got this eARC for review from Edelweiss. You can buy your copy here.