Silver Elite: Chapter 43

[penwalla]

Wren and Cross are on a date in this one.

"Is this a date?” The question pops out of my mouth before I can stop it. For a second, I hope he didn’t hear me over the sound of the rotors and rush of the wind at the open sides of the helicopter. But then he chuckles, and embarrassment warms my cheeks.

Cross glances over at me. “No.”

“Then why am I wearing a dress?”

“Did I ask you to wear a dress?”

I falter as I realize that no, actually, he didn’t. All he’d said was, We’re going off base. You don’t have to wear your uniform.

So it's a date. Wren broods about how she and Cross can't be together, but she also put on a dress and is holding his hand, so like...how torn up is she, really?

I stare at his chiseled profile and bite my lip. There are so many things I want to say to him, but I force myself to stick to the facts.

You’re my enemy.

Your father hates me.

You would kill me if you knew who I was.

We could never have a future.

We will never be together.

Wren thinks about how normal people have simpler lives because they submit to the General's worldview, and about how she trusts Cross and he makes her feel young and childish.

The romance in this book sucks for a lot of reasons, but this is a big one: we are getting emotional vulnerability between the love interests 75% of the way into the book. That is way, way too late. Especially because this isn't a slow burn novel where it's taken them this long to overcome their hatred for each other and finally develop feelings. Wren was lusting after Cross in the second chapter of this book and at no point has she stopped, and Cross very clearly forced Wren into the military in part because he was into her.

Thinking about Cross's abs is a not a substitute for actual romantic development. It's way too late into the book to be trying to convince me these two are good together.

And of course, like everything else in the book, the author doesn't seem to know how to use the world she's built and the backstories she's given her characters. For example: earlier in the book we heard the General tell Cross he was too soft on Mods. Yet despite hearing that conversation, Wren has never once explicitly hoped that maybe Cross would accept her if he knew about her. She has never thought about that at all. I don't even think she mentioned it during the whole bit with Tana when she was begging for them to go to the labor camps.

It really feels like this book was written in chunks without the author ever rereading any portion of it sometimes.

Anyways, Cross carries Wren on his back through the woods because she didn't wear practical shoes. He takes her to a hidden cave. Apparently Cross told her she didn't need her uniform but it didn't occur to him to tell her she would need boots.

What, they didn't have time for her to change?

They arrive finally to a cave full of glowing flowers.

Okay, we're now getting another lore dump. Late in the book to be introducing things like this, I will say.

He beckons me closer. When he plucks one of the flowers, I realize it’s growing between cracks not of rock, but of gemstone. Daggerstone. I remember learning in school how these cave systems began to get discovered about fifty years after the Last War. So many things died from the bombing, the radiation, and never grew back. In the Blacklands, I saw hybrid plants that never existed before the war. Bears with horns. Trees whose roots grew up and outward, rather than into the ground. Daggerstone is one of those anomalies. Cavers stumbled upon entire walls of these gemstones shaped like gnarled daggers, long and pointed and shimmering like white fireflies. Daggerstone is almost always white, although I did see someone with a blue daggerstone pendant once. Several shades darker than cobalt.

Wren is touched by Cross bringing her here, calling it "the most romantic thing a man has ever done for her" but there's no mention in this book of Wren ever having had a boyfriend before, just ill-advised hook ups with the enemy. So this may well be the only romantic thing a man has done for her.

Like every romantasy man, Cross loves to tell us about the heroine's nonexistent qualities.

Wren is apparently:
- wild
- mysterious
- has no expectations
- keeps people at arm's length

And I'm like. Mysterious, I'll give you. Wild, sure, though not in the way Cross means it. But this book is full of Wren having an unreasonable sense of entitlement and totally failing to keep people at arm's length.

She and Cross are about to kiss, but they're interrupted by a call from work--Cross needs to go to his mother.

Next scene.

Cross doesn't have time to go to base to drop Wren off, so she goes with him to the General's mansion.

I feel like it would extremely easy to simply have someone else come get Wren, and in fact that would be the reasonable thing to do since we have been told the General is very paranoid about his family's safety. And because it directly involves him family I think this is probably an area where Cross would not easily be able to override his father's wishes.

But no. This was the only way the author could get Wren in there. So off she goes, alerting the Uprising about it on the way.

Okay, and after joking about killing the General, we get this piece of idiocy:

“A dead General doesn’t dismantle the system. If you want to enact change, you need to do more than just take out the leader. You need to deprogram the minds. Root out the ideology.”

I wonder if she recognizes the irony. If she realizes she’s repeating the same things General Redden says during his broadcasts. Ideas are weeds. Don’t let them spread. Although I suppose Adrienne’s take has a slight variation. She doesn’t want to simply pull the weeds. She wants to plant something new in their place. I suppose I can admire that.

Wren, what the fuck are you talking about? The General literally wants to kill all Modified people. Adrienne is literally advocating against violence, arguing very reasonably that they have to build a society where hatred of Mods is not the norm, and Wren is like, damn, that sounds just like our fascist overlord.

So I guess all the parallels between the Uprising and the military in this book are on fucking purpose?

Great! My favorite thing in a book: when an author makes up a fictional marginalized group and then tries to create fake nuance by having the people fighting to not be oppressed also be evil!

Anyways, the General's mansion is sterile and cold, and it's also empty and silent. Apparently staff are only allowed in when the guards are there to supervise. Cross takes her into a living room and leaves her there to check on his mother.

Wren tries to investigate, but there's not much to find and all the rooms are locked behind fingerprint scanners. So she goes up the stairs and follows the sound of Cross's voice.

When I hear a low murmur somewhere ahead of me, I follow the sound. The worst that will happen is he’ll yell at me. Order me to get out. But I’m too curious to avoid a scolding. Besides, he should know me better by now. Of course I’m not going to stay put and wait for him. Not after he drops a cryptic I have to see my mother and then leaves me to fend for myself in his house.

Do you guys remember how at the beginning of this book, Wren made a series of impulsive decisions that lead to the death of her uncle and her enlistment in Silver Block's training program, and how she kept doing stupid shit and then telling us she was going to stop? And now we are 80% through the book and Wren is still making impulsive and stupid decisions, and her justification is that Cross should know better than to leave her unsupervised?

Wren barges into Cross's mother's bedroom, which is much more comfortable than the rest of the house, and interrupts her and Cross's conversation.

For some reason the book stalls to give us a long description of the room here, even though no one cares and it immediately cuts off any suspense that was building.

Cross asks Wren to leave, but she doesn't, and as she looks at Cross's mother she realizes...that she is Modified.

Chapter end.

I...hold on, Wren literally told Cross his mother was Aberrant earlier in the book. So was she repeating a hurtful rumor or something? What? This was not set up in any way, I have no idea what's going on.

Is this book about to drop an actual plot twist? That would be a first.