Review: Silvercloak

Silvercloak by Laura Steven
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

*I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.*

This book was NOT how I expected it to be. More astonishing it is that the most aspects I didn't think to appear in this book happened near the end of the story. It's a mix of good and bad things, but most are rather good.

First of all, this book reminded me a lot about Harry Potter — which isn't a bad thing since I like Harry Potter and it isn't just a copy of it. The whole idea that magic can only be refilled by either pleasure or pain and nothing else is a quite unique story idea, especially as one needs to choose between quantity (pleasure) and quality (pain). Thereof it shouldn't be a surprise that this book is featuring lots of painful scenes, which are usually torture. But it also shows happy moments — moments of hope. 'Cause of this wheel between pain and pleasure, I can confidently say that the characters, at least the two main characters, aren't one-dimensional as the reader gets plenty of opportunities to understand each of them better. One can connect and maybe even relate to some moments perfectly with the characters as not all pain and pleasure scenes are on the extreme but an in-between.

Secondly, the pacing wasn't feeling off and I felt like at least every third chapter or even more often, depending on which part of the story one where, there was something exciting to read about. It never really felt boring or like the pacing just wasn't right. As well as the story being divided into 5 parts, made the reader understand quite well where they were and I believe it's also a good tool for the author to not mess up the pacing.

I love the undercover situation the main character is in for the whole story! It just feels so exciting to read about and gives the story a tense mood and a dangerous environment which never made me left boring. As mentioned in other reviews already I'm usually not a fan of enemy to lovers trope unless it's executed well and fits the storyline. At first I was skeptical about it — My first thought was that it was once more used solely for the purpose of it being popular amongst readers nowadays. It took me till the end reveal to realise how impactful this trope truly is for this story. The real reason for their hate turning into love. More precisely, why they feel such hate towards eachother and that it's more than just on a surface level, which is the reason why most books fail me with this trope.

I'm so glad that despite the main character making stupid decisions sometimes that she is aware of it and tries to change it without losing control by panicking or in general being annoying towards the reader and being labelled as many other main characters in books or films as stupid. She knows how to fix it and even though I sometimes had the feeling that she lost focus of her goal, 'cause of her love towards another main character (which was, to be honest, once or twice annoying near the end) she still tried to fix it somehow. The only thing that really bothered me that she was a bit too self-reproachful and sometimes even self-loathing. I do understand where she was coming from and that she had to do horrible things to stay undercover, but sometimes I felt like she was blaming herself for things she wasn't at fault at all — things that were out of her control. It was even revealed later on that some of the things she blamed herself for where the fault of someone completely else. The only positive thing I got out of her inner conflict is seeing how she developed throughout the story.

At 38% in, the reader hears for the first time the nickname the lover gives our main girl and as any romantic book, readers like to rate how cute/fitting it is and I would say it is 9/10 as it had multiple meanings throughout the story which makes her nickname quite unique. (The reason for reducing 1 star and not giving it 10/10 can not be mentioned here as it would be a spoiler, before anyone asks).
I also like in this book that the two leads are connected by the same fate and interest, but with a greater reason than just making it cute/romantic as it actually has a great impact on the story on the end.
+ I prefer if it's not the typical ‘opposites attracts’ thing but more of a ‘similarities attract’ as you can't be attracted to someone that is too much the opposite of you, that just doesn't work, there has to be at least one thing to be able to have a conversation of interest and in general not having to fight all the time 'cause they believe in different things, etc. The only case when opposite attracts is when the opposites can eliminate a flaw, when the opposites make a whole. For instance, one is reluctant but the other one is hot-heated. The reluctant one who thinks before acting can make the hot-heated person stop before they do something they regret. The hot-heated could help the reluctant person to do something they might be afraid to do as the hot-heated one might have experience of what will happen and can reassure the reluctant to just do it as nothing bad will happen. Nowadays it happens more often in fiction that people write about opposites attract in a way that would never work in real life and can potentially be harmful to the reader who perhaps actually believes that this could work out in real life.

I'm not sure if it's a me problem, as I seem to find out about plot twist fast before they are revealed quite often, but the foreshadowing in this book make me guess correctly quite fast what is about to happen. I don't really see it as something bad that it wasn't (for me at least) hard to know/guess the plot twist as it didn't impact my enjoyment of reading this book. I liked that if you didn't catch the hint immediately that the reader only got the next opportunity to find out about it way later, so it's not like hints are dropped every few pages and makes it overly obvious or something.

When I started reading the epilogue, I was thinking that it kinda ruins the fun for the next book of the series, but then I thought that this is actually perfect to make the readers excited and stay for the next book. This was the only plot twist I didn't expect and that made the ending of the book even better.
(+ not all questions were answered yet, which makes the readers of this book more intrigued in reading the next one to hopefully getting the questions answered)

I hated the fact that there was sexual intercourse. In general, I don't like such things as it makes me uncomfortable. Fortunately, it was only described once in detail, as it revealed something important, though it could have also be revealed without the sexual intercourse, which makes me question if it was necessary to include in the story.

Despite all the question answered why a certain character possesses so many magic fields it still feels wrong and overpowered. The reason is just too weak as the same could be said to any other character, as just 'cause you felt more pain than someone else doesn't immediately makes you able to know how to use all the magic that exists in the story (except timeweaving). Pain only improves the quality, but the ability to have more magical fields needs great learning skills and the determination to never give up and it feels weird that from all the characters that try to have more magic fields that this one specific one just has all of them, especially as this character can even overpower the main character which is going a bit too far for me personally. Despite this aspect of the story, everything else that got answered so far had a good explanation that was understandable and made sense.

Overall, I will give this 3 out of 5 stars. I reduced 2 to me feeling uncomfortable in some romantic scenes and for the aspect of a character being overpowered. As well as Saffron swimming sometimes in self-loath, which was annoying to watch a couple of times. Lastly, even though it is supposed to be an adult fantasy it read like young adult fantasy as the characters never really acted like they were really adults themselves, it's not like they are overly childish or something but they didn't seem to be acting like adults would either. Nevertheless, I do see potential in this story and be interested in reading the next installment of the series when it comes out.



Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Del Rey for the advanced reader copy of Silvercloak by L. K. Steven



Started the book: 28. March 2025
Finished the book: 29. March 2025
Wrote the review: 29. March 2025