Book Review: Otherborn by Anna Silver—and a Giveaway

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Otherborn  by Anna Silver 
Series: Otherborn, #1 
Publication: April 4th 2013
by Sapphire Star Publishing 
Genre: YA Dystopian
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OtherbornOtherborn
Anna Silver
Sapphire Star Publishing, April 2013
ISBN 978-1-938404-42-9
Ebook
Also available in trade paperback

From the publisher—

London and her teenage friends live in a reprocessed world.

Confined within Capital City’s concrete walls, London has done the impossible and the illegal. She’s created something New-a song. But her mentor, club owner Pauly, is not impressed. Since the historic Energy Crisis forced everyone behind walls generations ago, the Tycoons have ensured there is truly nothing new allowed under the sun. Pauly warns London to keep her song to herself, if she knows what’s good for her.

What he doesn’t know is that London is keeping an even bigger secret: she dreams. And she’s not alone. London’s band-mates and friends have begun dreaming as well, seeing themselves in “night pictures” as beings from another world. As Otherborn, they must piece together the story of their astral avatars, the Others, in order to save their world from a dreamless, hopeless future.

When Pauly is murdered and an Otherborn goes missing, London realizes someone is hunting them down. Escaping along the Outroads, they brave the deserted Houselands with only their dreams to guide them. Can they find their friend before the assassin finds them? Will being Otherborn save their lives, or destroy them?

At a time when young adult fiction is overrun with dystopian themes that are often only mediocre at best, Otherborn is kind of remarkable, especially for a debut author. I’m a big fan of dystopian works and can say I even enjoy some of the less-than-stellar attempts but this one introduces some really fresh concepts.

Imagine a world in which dreaming is a thing of the past. Actually, you probably wouldn’t be able to imagine it if such a world existed because, after all, imagination and dreams are interwoven with each other, aren’t they? Most people live in poverty, barely managing to survive through whatever means possible while the ruling class thrives, and creating anything new is an invitation to disaster . Then a girl named London and her friends begin to dream and they discover that things are not at all as they seem—or as they’ve been led to believe.

London is a character with many facets, at turns strong and childish, thoughtful and selfish, intelligent and obtuse, driven and obsessed. In other words, she’s a teenager with signs of maturity as well as self-absorption and all of that makes her very appealing but, at the same time, frequently annoying. Other characters did not make much of an impression on me but I didn’t dislike them.

When it comes to worldbuilding, Ms. Silver has some good ideas but we don’t learn enough in this first of a series to become comfortable with the setting and too many variables come into play. I found myself often pulled out of the story while I tried to really understand what was going on and, while that can be a forceful encouragement to keep reading, I actually found it distracting at times. The creation of an imaginary world is, to my way of thinking, critical to the success of any dystopian story and the author that can bring the reader into that world without answering all possible questions is a very talented writer. I don’t want to know everything in the first book of a series but this one left me a little too puzzled.

Otherborn offers a lot of promise and delivers on much of it despite its shortcomings. Anna Silver is an author I’m glad to have “discovered” and I’ll want to hear more from  her, especially about London and her life.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, April 2013.

Giveaway

To enter the drawing for one of 5 ebook copies of Otherborn by Anna Silver,

just check out this Rafflecopter link. This drawing is open internationally.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Anna SilverAnna Silver is an artist and writer living in the greater Houston area with her family, pets, and overactive imagination. Her art, which includes oil paintings, assemblage sculptures, and fairy houses, has been featured in the Houston gallery Las Manos Magicas. She studied English Writing & Rhetoric at St. Edward’s University in Austin. She has written web copy for private clients and freelanced for the Hill Country Current in Texas. Her write-up on a past-life regression experience was chosen to be featured in best-selling author Brian Weiss’ new book. She is a member of the Writer’s League of Texas. OTHERBORN is her first published novel.

Author Links:
Website: http://www.annasilverauthor.com
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6862122.Anna_Silver
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorannasilver?skip_nax_wizard=true
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saysannasilver

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