Book Review: Silver Elite

Title: Silver Elite
Author: Dani Francis
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Romance, Fiction

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What It’s About:

Wren Darlington grew up in the Blacklands—her uncle took her there when she was five, at the behest of her parents to protect her, save her and raise her. They spent three years there before they returned to Ward Z, where they settled down as ranchers. On liberation day, Wren is in the nearby village and spent the evening tumbling with a soldier from Command. She tries to get out of the room and from staying with him that night, and so makes up a ruse to go to the bathroom, but then tries to bolt down the stairs. Unfortunately her partner starts looking for her, so she jumps into another room, where she comes face to face with a handsome Command soldier, who doesn’t tell her much of anything, but questions her about her rifle, and why she’s in his room. He does give her the freedom to leave, and as she heads out she runs into the soldier with whom she spent the evening. They head out with him trying to convince her to stay the night, and her tellling him that she’s trying to get home to her uncle because they have to take care of the ranch. She also talks to Tana, her best friend in the town, via a mental link as both of them are Mods—a human born with supernatural mental abilities. Suddenly, screams break out and they find out that this white hybrid wolf has grabbed one of the village boys by the arm and is trying to drag him back out, so Wren decides to use her shooting abilities to kill the white wolf, while saving the boy. The child’s mother is even thankful for all that Wren has done, though Jordan, the soldier with whom Wren had spent the evening in bed, asks a lot of questions as to how she could possibly shoot that well. Wren explains to him that she had to learn how to shoot because of the ranch and the animals that attack her cattle, but that her shooting the wolf through the eye was actually a fluke.

She gets on a bike and goes home to Uncle Jim Darlington, where she tells him the truth about what she did, and he starts to lecture her about not drawing attention to themselves, which she recites because that is the same lecture she has heard for many many years now, but she said that she didn’t want to let the child die. Uncle Jim tells her that he will be heading out to a different ward soon, and promises that he will tell her bye before he does leave. They go to sleep, and the next morning Wren heads out to check out the pasture, where she fixes a fence. When she starts heading back, she feels Uncle Jim linking with her and he tells her that he does not want her to come back home because two command officers are here trying to see her shoot. She crests a hill and finds that Jordan is with them, and then realizes that Uncle Jim is on his knees. She reaches out to him, and he tells her that one of the command soldiers recognized him, so they’re taking him away, and orders her to go to Tana and her dad for safety, just like they practiced. Wren does exactly that, and begs Tana’s father to get her into the Point—short for Sanctum Point—so that she can go save her Uncle. She travels the next day to the point, where she meets with a Member of the Uprising, who explains to her that Jim, whose real name is Julian Ash, was found guilty of desertion (he was a Command officer) and concealment (for being a Mod) by the Tribunal and he will be killed by firing squad. Wren asks them if they will save him, to which the member of the Uprising explains to her that Julian is not worth saving. She also makes contact with her silent contact, Declan, who is the driver of the car, and he’s surprised that she’s able to so quickly link via the mind with him. The two tell her that they are taking her to a Safe House, and will move her elsewhere after; they ask her to lay low, especially seeing that the Tribunal sentenced him to death.

Wren goes to the square where her uncle will be made into a spectacle, and she waits for him to come out. When he does, and he recognizes her, he tells her via their mindlink that she needs to leave. Wren decides not to do it and instead stays to watch him until the very end—but she specifically tries to use her incitement powers to get the killing squad to shoot themselves. It does work partially by making them point the gun away, but ultimately they end up shooting her uncle, and he sends her the last message—telling her that he loves her, and calling her a little bird. Wren then makes her way out, only to be caught by command soldiers and thrown into a questioning room. Two people question her further about her intentions, telling her that Jim is Julian Ash, though she pretends that she doesn’t know Jim as Julian Ash, and claims that they’re not telling her the truth. The man that she had encountered in Hamlett in the Inn is there, but he doesn’t say anything and stays silent, not even introducing himself to her. Eventually, one of the two interrogators starts to believe her that Wren didn’t know anything, but then they decide to bring Jayde Valence—the strongest mind-reader there is, and Wren freaks out that she has no chance to not be found out, but she decides to use the tactics that she was taught by Uncle Jim around not shielding her mind, but rather putting thoughts that she wants to share with Jayde to fool her. It ends up working and Jayde tells them all that she doesn’t know anything about Julian and that Wren is not lying. Mr. Silent, the guy that Wren met in the inn, finally tells her that he’s the one that will make a decision around what happens to her, and only tells her his name as Cross. Wren gets thrown into the stockade and then is told that she will be recruited to Silver Block—that is the only way that she can prove her loyalty to the Command.

So Wren goes through the trainings unwillingly—the first day she makes friends with Lyddie, and Kaine—after they pass the test, and they end up sharing the same sleeping quarters. Kaine is a flirt, but Wren finds him harmless, and she offers to give up her bed to one of the other recruits, while she shares the bed with Kaine. For this, she is called to Cross’s office, and they trade sarcastic remarks with each other. At first, Wren does everything that she can to make sure that she fails her classes, even some of the classes in things like shooting, which she has always excelled in. Her hope is that if she fails, Cross will actually kick her out of the program. She becomes close friends with Kaine, Lyddie, and Bettima, and they all talk about the Mods—though it hurts her feelings as to how Lyddie and one of the others talk about Mods, and how they treat the Mods that are slaves to the Command as if they are diseased. There is an incident in which some of the psychopathic students—Roe, who is Cross’s half brother, Anson, Kess and Ivy try to pick on her because they heard about the shooting of Julian Ash, and they think that she is a Mod, to which she explains to them that she didn’t know that her uncle was a Mod. The group seems to accept it and lets it be as it is.

During one outing, they jump across buildings and Wren finds that thrilling, though she has always been a bit more on the adventurous side; she still keeps her abilities hidden from others, especially her ability to shoot really well with a rifle. She encourages Lyddie just before she takes her own jump, and when they find themselves back down on the ground, they are all thrilled to be there. Unfortunately, one of the recruits ends up impaling themselves on the fencing during the exercise, and while everyone is tending to the individual, Bettima is really upset, covering up her sleeves. Wren goes to check on her and watches as Roe looks at them strangely. That night, she follows Bettima up to the rooftop where they talk and Bettima confides in her that it’s the first time she’s felt someone die. Roe shows up with his two friends, and reveals that Bettima is an empath—she had hidden her arms because she’s a Mod. He then proceeds to shoot Bettima in the head in cold blood, after which Wren rushes back to the bunks and tells everyone. People go out to check in on what had happened, but no one knew that Bettima was a Mod. Not too long after the incident, Wren gets contacted by Dylan who tells her to meet with someone in a specific location in base. She meets with a member of the Uprising who introduces herself as Adrienne, and ultimately tells her that their other recruit had died, confirming that Bettima was a member of the Uprising who was attempting to infiltrate the Silver Elite program. Adrienne tells her that Wren now has to make it into Silver Elite, to which Wren tells her that she’s not sure she will be able to do so when she’s already failing and it’s almost halfway over. Adrienne tells her to figure it out.

So Wren surprises everyone at the range the next day—taking impossible shots with precision and Ivy’s help. She even shows Ford that she can shoot his canteen of water out in the desert, though Cross tells her that no one likes a show off. That night in the Desert, both Cross and Wren take showers in the stalls next to each other and they end up basically ogling each other in the open, which bothers Ivy a bit, and it is noticed by everyone. But during the next sessions, even though Wren does well, she is not getting high marks, so she decides to take things into her hand, and sneaks into Cross’s bedroom, surprising him while he’s in the middle of having sex with someone else. He agrees to stop failing her if only she gets her scores on her written tests up.

Wren continues going through the training program with her friends, and she ultimately ends up having sex with Cross once, though they continue doing it further down the road. She also watches as Cross fights Roe in the fighting pits because the youngest brother calls him over to fight in the ring, and separately she has an undercover mission, where she is to make contact with the owner of a brothel. Cross comes to that mission and tells her what to do, and when to leave. Once she does, she is to wait for him at his office, and that is the first time that they have sex as a one time thing, though Wren cannot stay away from him. Then, the day that the marks come out, she finds out that she has been shortlisted for the Silver Elite Program. It is her and eleven others that had been shortlisted, and the test for the Silver Elite unit is very simple—they will go fight in pairs, and whoever gets the other to tap out becomes a member of Silver Elite. Wren gets paired with Bryce, whose father is a high up member of the intelligence unit, and he had come by to see the recruits for the Silver Elite unit. Neither of the two women want to give in, as Bryce really wants to make her father proud and get into the program, while Wren wants to do it because she is tasked to do so by the Uprising, and ultimately Wren ends up accidentally killing Bryce in the fight. When she leaves the room, she finds out that Kaine made it through as well, but she was the only one who murdered her classmate in the room. Bryce’s father passes by and only gives her a nod in passing for a job well done.

Time goes by and Wren, now a member of the Silver Elite Unit, has been giving some intelligence to Adrienne and the Uprising. She continues having sex with Cross, though they manage to keep themselves professional in front of others, and she hasn’t seen Lyddie or Kaine that often. She goes through a health check up, where the Modified man, Elliot, offers to heal her skin for her, but she tells him that she doesn’t want to as it is a part of her, and she doesn’t think that she would be herself without the scarring. At some point, her unit is called in for a meeting—it turns out that they have two missions: one to go check out something around a dealer in medical products, and another that will be looking closely at the citizens of Ward Z, where Julian Ash had been found, and there is some suspicion of the sheriff. Wren gets paired up with Ford and another member of the group to go to look into the drug trafficking trade, while Cross takes Anson, one of the more sadistic members of his team, to Ward Z to question the sheriff about the Mods and where they might be hiding. Wren’s group tries to get some information, but they get sent to a hospital in the ward that they’re in, and while there, Wren finds a room of Mods with fractured minds—those that look and sound like they’re crazy. Ford tells her that not everyone is strong enough to handle the magic that they’re gifted with. They come up empty handed though they had gotten some information on how the guy might be doing this.

But before they return to the capital, they get called in to go to Ward Z because the Sheriff and his daughter had tried to run. Wren had told Adrienne about the questioning to which Adrienne had said not to warn them, but Wren decided to do it against her wishes anyway in order to make sure that her friend is safe. She arrives in Ward Z, and finds out that they haven’t been able to make any heads nor tails with the sheriff, so she pleads with Cross for her to talk to the sheriff as it’s her best friend’s father and asks Cross to give them a punishment of going to a labor camp in exchange for the information they’re seeking. She talks to the sheriff, and tells him about the deal, while also letting him know that she’s had contact with Tana. They talk about it, but the Sheriff wants to hear it from Cross that he will give them a deal. In the meantime, Tana reaches out to Wren asking to link, but she sounds frantic and terrified. So Wren takes a bike and rushes over to where Tana was being held. There she finds that Anson has been killed on the bed, and Tana looks completely shell-shocked and disheveled; evidence that the man had tried to rape her. Wren tells Tana that she will cover it up but that she has to back her up and shoots at the door to make it look like Anson tried to shoot at her, and that she had killed him. When Cross shows up with his men, Wren tells him that she had walked in on Anson trying something, and he had shot at her, so she killed him in self defense. At that point they take Tana out and after making sure she is all right, Wren reveals that she will be going to a labor camp, which doesn’t make Tana happy and instead they get into an argument, because Tana believes that Wren should have done something to save her from such a fate, as they were best friends.

Some more time goes by and Wren and Cross continue strengthening their relationship. Cross takes her out to a cavern in a helicopter as a date, and on the way back he is forced to stop by at his home. He leaves Wren in one of the floors while he disappears, after telling her not to wander. Wren does it anyway, and comes across Cross in a room with a woman who is his mother. She reaches out via a mental link, and realizes that Cross’s mother is also Modified as she has a fractured mine, though Cross tells her that it’s because his mom has schizophrenia. He’s begging with his mom to eat something as she has been refusing to eat, and he doesn’t want to intubate her again. His mom seems to settle with Wren there in the room, and he brings her some food, which she ends up eating. While there, Wren looks at a painting and recognizes it from Wolf’s description.

She spends a couple of days wondering about how to confirm whether Cross is Wolf, and one night while they are together in bed, she tells him about a nightmare, describing one that he knows so well. It unsettles Cross so much to the point that he has a knife against her throat, which has Wren laughing, and she asks him if his favorite animal is still a Wolf because her favorite plants are no longer daisies after they destroyed one of the fields on the ranch. They realize that the serendipitous link that they had made had been with each other when they were children, and so they test out their mental link to hear each other’s voices. Wren tells him how she figured it out—the painting in his mother’s room, that he had described to her, which she thought was a real view out of his window not a painting. She tells him that his mom had to be Modified as well.

Another mission takes Cross, Ford, Kaine, Tyler, another individual, and Wren to a weapons depot—an old one that the regime had used—all because one of the Uprising members had downed his plane in that area. They split up in threes to investigate, with Wren providing cover while Cross and Ford search the area, and while Kaine, Tyler and the other individual go into the actual depot. The mines that had been planted there by the regime, go off, killing Tyler, Kaine and the other individual. Cross has to stop both Wren and Ford from running into the ruins of the building, because Wren cares about Kaine, while Ford was in a relationship with Tyler. There is nothing to be done after all, but then suddenly one of their highly specked out flight crafts starts and flies off, and Cross realizes that this had been the aim all along for the uprising. He accuses Wren of being aware of this whole situation via their link, and remains distant for a few days. This includes the memorial of the fallen, one of whom is the child of a higher up individual in the chain, who demands to have answers. Wren wants to prove to Cross that she had nothing to do with this, so she goes to take care of something, after listening to Cross’s older brother tell him to fix this whole matter.

Later on, she visits Cross in his apartments, and reveals that she had gotten her scarring removed, which shows the blood mark that she has—and tells him the truth about everything from knowing about Julian, to working with the Uprising and how it got started. She also reveals to him about all four of her abilities. Cross tells her that she shouldn’t have gotten that healed, despite her confirming that Elliot was working with the Uprising even though he was basically a slave, as it puts her in risk. But he also tells her that he needed time to process things, and that he wasn’t angry with her or thought that she was behind the whole thing. She also reveals that she will have a mission with Adrienne—to set up some bombs in a location within the base for an event that is coming up.

The day of the event comes up and Wren goes to put those bombs up. She is finished when she comes face to face with Jayde Valence, who had foreseen that Wren would put the bombs up in this location. Wren has a conversation with Cross via link, telling him to hurry up and come to her, while she talks with Jayde, not trying to reveal anything. Ultimately Jayde is going to take her in and have her revealed as Mod, when Wren uses her incite powers to have Jayde kill herself. She tells Cross via the link, and he sends her back to her room, while he and Ford take care of it. While Wren is in the room, Lyddie comes in to get ready with her and she sees the Bloodmark. Wren makes up a story about it that she’s actually working with the government to help them against the Mods, and asks Lyddie to keep it secret, though Lyddie reveals the information to Ivy just as soon as Ivy comes out of the rooms. They get dressed and they go to the event, where Lyddie goes to see her parents, so Wren doesn’t think much of it. She speaks briefly with Cross, and then notices Adrienne at the party. Then General Redden starts speaking, and he is completely nonsensical in the information he is sharing, bringing confusion to the crowd. Wren looks at Adrienne and realizes that Adrienne is doing something to the General—having realized that there is another power out there that breaks minds. When the bombs go off, she helps Adrienne out of the space, and gets her into a car, which promptly peels off. Before Wren is able to do anything more, Roe shows up and apprehends her, revealing that Lyddie had told them that Wren is a Mod, and so Wren is thrown into the brig where she initially spent some time when she came to Sanctum Point. She stays there for a while, as Cross is in meetings, but when he finally does come for her because the Tribunal voted to have her killed, he also has Ford with him. They travel by bike all the way to the Blacklands, where Cross leaves them, telling her that he needs to be here in order to balance out both of his brothers, who are really anti-Mod and will do anything to kill them now that they’re in control. Wren and Cross say goodbye, and together with Ford she makes her way through the Blacklands, as she had planned to do based on what Adrienne had told her—there wasn’t anyone to come get them, but if she was able to get through to a point, someone would be able to pick them up. As Ford and Wren walk through the Blacklands, they talk, and Ford reveals that when Cross broke up with Ivy he had said that Ivy is not the girl of his dreams—the girl of his dreams loves daisies, and now that he knows everything including that Cross is Mod himself, he can see that Cross was always in love with her. Wren tells him of her time growing up in the Blacklands, and they find their way to the house that she and Uncle Jim had in the Blacklands. They stay the night there, and Wren finds a letter at the bottom of a trunk from Uncle Jim, who reveals her real name as well as the fact that her parents were traitors who worked against the uprising, including massacring a good amount of their people.

Wren burns that letter as requested, and then the two of them make their way through the Blacklands until they come out on the other side. When they get there, she reaches out to Adrienne via the link, and Adrienne tells her where to go in order to meet the helicopter that will come for them. It arrives, with none other than Kaine piloting the helicopter. He reveals that he’s actually the kick ass pilot that works for the uprising by the name of Grayson, and that he was tasked with getting into Silver Elite in order to steal one of those planes that they had taken with them to the depot. They have apprehended Ford, though Wren tries to vouch for him, and Kaine tells her that it’s because he’s done a lot of damage to others that he is getting apprehended.

My Thoughts:

I enjoyed this dystopian book a lot more than I actually expected. It’s got some similarities to Dauntless, and Hunger Games, but not quite the same as it has a more science fiction-y twist. I honestly liked it better than Dauntless and more or less the same as the first Hunger Games book. I had suspected that wolf and Cross were one and the same for a while, so it was nice to have my suspicions confirmed towards the end of the book, but I also loved the slow-burn romance from enemies to lovers arc in this novel. Overall a good, fast paced book and I am looking forward to the second one coming out soon!

If you are interested in reading this book and the upcoming release, you can find them here: Silver Elite and Broken Dove.