Revealing Silver

Revealing Silver is the conclusion of the Silver Maiden Trilogy by Jamie Craig. With a very small amount of recap, it picks up exactly where Touching Silver left off. And thank goodness for that! The cliffhanger at the end of Touching Silver was a real doozy!

The oldest story in the world is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. As a society we’ve finally admitted that there are tons of wonderful stories in the variations on that theme–boy meets boy, girl meets girl, variations where three or more can play, whatever happens to float your personal boat. Science fiction and fantasy have added even more flavors, for example: boy or girl meets robot, or boy or girl meets vampire or shapeshifter, but the basic concept still stands. The love story is a classic, and the pattern is the same, they meet, they get separated, they get back together.

In Chasing Silver, Remy and Nate meet because Remy gets dragged back in time 70+ years. For them, it’s a miracle. They save each other.

Touching Silver was Nate’s partner Isaac’s story. When Nate and Remy find each other, Isaac is left out in the cold. He’s been the one keeping Nate from the abyss for the past five years, and suddenly he’s a fifth wheel. Until Detective Olivia Wright walks into his life. Olivia doesn’t need saving, but she would love to be his partner.

Two couples who have both fulfilled the first part of the love story equation, in the middle of Nate and Isaac’s investigation of a gang war between their two worst enemies; Cameron Parker, the man who set them up five years ago, and Gabriel de los Rios, the gang leader obsessed with the Silver Maiden coins, and the one who kidnapped the seven young girls in Olivia Wright’s Cold Case files.

At the end of Touching Silver, Nate, Remy, Isaac and Olivia interrupt a ritual Gabriel and his cousin are conducting, a ritual designed to bring back the original Silver Maiden. Gabriel and his cousin Marisol may be crazy, but six girls are still missing, and Remy knows that this ritual is building up the same kind of power that sent her back in time. She stops the ritual by throwing herself into the ritual circle, and finds herself jumping time again, this time back to Los Angeles in 2000. Her only hope is to contact Isaac and Nate in that time, while they were still both LAPD, and try to get help without screwing up her own personal timeline.

Nate is still back in 2010, and is devastated almost beyond repair. He tried to go through the circle before it closed, and Isaac stopped him. Their friendship, their brotherhood, is in tatters. Olivia is also linked to the Silver Maiden coins: Gabriel and Marisol both say that she a “Keeper”, a part of the coins in her own right.

When Gabriel and Marisol’s agendas diverge in their desires to use (or abuse) the Silver Maiden’s power, Gabriel kidnaps Olivia and uses her “Keeper” power to send her back in time to fix the things that he believes Marisol has broken, while he holds Nate hostage in 2010 for her “good” behavior. It’s a wild race to the finish.

Escape Rating B+: I was up until after 2 am trying to finish this. I was that caught up in it. The characters do make references to being caught up in a Doctor Who episode, and that’s pretty appropriate. There are a certain amount of “timey wimey” bits involved. But definitely in a fun way.

I will say that enjoying this story depends on having read the other two. This is the third book of a trilogy, and it assumes prior knowledge. It does wrap up all the loose ends very nicely. Justice is served, and the good guys get their well-deserved happy ending.

If I have piqued your interest in the Silver Maiden Trilogy, here are my reviews of Chasing Silver and Touching Silver so you can get the complete picture.