This is what Cadet 39 had worked so hard for. All the learning, conditioning, the studying of the founder’s mantra, the tests and defeats of other cadets. She is the first
pioneer of their kind to kickstart their mission Project Ultima to find a new planet. The chosen planet is called Earth.
She lands in the snow, her skin Silver against the white. But there are humans in this place, and she is seen. She must hide. Become one of them. Report back to the founders. Cadet 39 finds a teenage girl, scans her mind and inhabits her body. This girl is named Syliva, and is about to meet a local family to become their live-in pet sitter. The family is made up of three humans. Stella, the adult human, Doodles, a young girl human, and Finch who is a boy human the same age as the girl she is inhabiting.
Determined to do well, Cadet 39 studies the family, learning the human ways. It’s a struggle to understand some of the things they say, and what they require of her. She is to report back to the founders on the local hill where they shield themselves and wait for her progress reports.
Her mission is also difficult as she begins to like these humans and feels guilt at inhabiting one. She is instructed to inhabit each of the family members in order to learn as much as she can, but that is difficult too. She has been taught not to feel. But as a young cadet and even earlier on her ship, she felt different to her peers, caring for them when she shouldn’t.
She has been taught to fear human touch, as it will damage her. But the more she gets to know humans, she wonders about her mission, the mantra she has lived by and her own sense of self.
A love story like no other. Silver is sci-fi, romance and the story of a family all rolled into one. Each chapter begins with a quote from The Mantra – something this tribe of aliens live by, which helps the reader understand the main character, Silver.
But she is an anomaly among her kind, which puts a spanner in the alien’s planned takeover of the Earth. This difference in her is woven into a twist for readers, but only once you have fallen in love with her falling in love, with a human boy named Finch.
Other characters are just as likeable, whether it be Finch’s neuro divergent little sister, Betty the old lady next door, or a homeless man named Three Fingers. Silver is a wonderful study of what it is to be human, our quirks, sayings and social rules, and how an alien (albeit an empathetic one) views them.
I really enjoyed hanging out with this family, and didn’t want to leave them behind at the end of the book.
Author – Olivia Levez
Age – 13+
(2025, Bonnier, Hot Key Books, Animals, Sci Fi, Friendship, Romance, Love, Secret, Humans, Body snatcher, Spaceship, Aliens, Planet search, Doctrine, Control, Identity, Lies, Freedom)