Silver Elite: Chapter 17

[penwalla]

We open the chapter with Wren reminscing about her parents, who she barely remembers. Her uncle talked to her about them some.

Uncle Jim told me once, after he’d knocked back half a dozen glasses of whiskey, that my mom was the bravest woman he’d ever known. That she was so cool under pressure, so rock-steady in the face of danger, you’d think she didn’t possess a fear gene.

“So she was like me,” had been my reply. A soft smile touched my lips, only to fade at his reply.

“No. You, Wren, are reckless. And reckless is not the same as brave.”

My lips had tightened with offense.

“Rushing headfirst into danger is not an act of courage,” he continued, gruff and impassive. “Your mother thought very hard about her every action. She went into every single situation with her eyes wide open. She knew exactly what she was doing and why.”

So this chapter is going to be about Wren being reckless. Like...every other chapter before it. We are 37% into the book, please, let this be a chapter where Wren overcomes her flaws for even a few pages.

Also, what the fuck is Jim talking about here? Rushing into danger is brave. Brave doesn't mean intelligent, you can be brave and stupid at the same time. And thinking about your actions and knowing what you are doing is also not brave. Words mean things! You are describing Wren's mother as being cautious, not as being brave!

Anyways, Wren is thinking about all this because she's decided she needs to come up with an actual plan to escape the base. With forethought. As a reminder, Wren's been telling us she's trying to plan an escape the entire time she's been here, she just has failed every time she's tried. Why is the book trying to gaslight me into believing this is a new development?

Wren is scouting the base so she can have information to come up with a good plan, so she...goes straight for the place they executed her uncle.

And she stays there, brooding, until Cross shows up. And then, right where her uncle was executed, SHE IS HORNY ABOUT CROSS.

Cross is there to remind her that she's being monitored and she only got this far because he allowed her to, which, duh, I figured that out. Only Wren was too dumb to notice.

And then, god, they start having Deep Conversations.

“My uncle wasn’t evil.”

“What happens down there goes beyond your uncle. Before the Last War, there were penitentiaries all over the world. As a society, we housed millions of criminals. Clothed them, fed them. Cold-blooded killers and child rapists living better lives than most free people. Even the ones who were sentenced to death were allowed to live for decades past their sentences. They ate three square meals a day while those who hadn’t killed or raped anyone could barely afford to eat. Evil pilfering rare resources from innocent citizens.”

I don't...I cannot.

First of all, yes, Wren does have to remind herself not to be attracted to Cross during this conversation.

Second of all, Cross spends the rest of this convo trying to convince Wren to stop faking being incompetent and actually take being in Silver Block seriously. But he also says he doesn't trust her. So like...why does he want her to succeed here? Like, I don't understand Cross's motivations at all. If he believes that she's a secret Aberrant or rebel, I find it hard to believe that he can't just have her indefinitely imprisoned or sent to a labor camp or whatever. And if he's waiting for her to trip up, it is probably not helping that he constantly reminds her he is watching, it would make way more sense to lure her into a false sense of security. And why is she taking space in your elite training program, bro? Stick her in Tin Block and wait for her to fuck up there!

Cross is like, this is your fate so accept it, and I'm like, what? Why?

There are times when I wonder if AI was used to write this book, because if you read this page in isolation and don't think about it at all, it looks fine, it's got lots of dramatic dialogue and internal monologue. But if you actually read the text with your brain on, you're going to go, wait a minute, what does fate have to do with any of this? Why do we have an entire chapter about Wren deciding she is going to escape the situation when she's been trying to escape the fucking situation the entire goddamn time? This isn't a revelation! This is the book going in circles!

I’ve accepted a lot of fates.

I’ve accepted that my parents are dead.

That Jim is gone.

That my mind is a weapon and if people knew even half of what I could do, they would put a bullet in my brain.

I’ve accepted that I’m never going to trust anyone enough to show them who I am, because it will always be too dangerous.

But I will not accept this fate. I wasn’t “destined” to be a Command prisoner. And I’ll be damned before I submit to it.

What do you MEAN? You have never accepted it! You have never submitted to it! You're doing a bad job because you're being written by a hack, but still!

This book is bad.