The Silver Metal Lover

by Tanith Lee

book data

454 ratings, 4.10 average rating, 52 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		42%
4		31%
3		19%
2		5%
1		0%

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published

December 1st 1999 by DAW Hardcover (first published 1981)

details

Hardcover

isbn

0809950006 (isbn13: 9780809950003)

description

The Silver Metal Lover is a classic tale of transforming love. It's a keeper, a book that gets reread 'til it falls apart. Fans petitioned to get it r…more

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Oct 21, 2008

Trin rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: english-lit, sci-fi

Read in October, 2008

Since I used to go by the name “Tanith” on the interwebs, I guess it’s good I finally read a Tanith Lee book. (As nice as it was to get complimented a couple of times on emulating Lee’s style in pieces of my writing, as far as I was concerned I was referencing an obscure Star Wars thing. Oh well, it’s geeky either way.) This was pretty cool. Jane, the protagonist and narrator, bugged me at first, but that made her development as a character even more compelling—Lee does a good job sh...more

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May 01, 2009

April added it (review of isbn 0553581279)

"Perhaps there are others like me, who missed reading this lovely classic, first published a quarter century ago. Then this review is for them.[return][return]The heroine, sixteen-year-old Jane, comes of age in the book, so I suppose it would be classified as a teen or young adult novel in the Science Fiction genre. It is also a funny and moving romance, a commentary on what it means to be human, and a satire on political expediency.[return][return]In some future world, where the rich have ...more

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May 27, 2009

Mondlicht rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

5+++ STARS.

Basically, this is the story about a young woman named Jane who falls in love with a sort of futuristic lifelike robotic minstrel/entertainer who is also a sex toy for women/men created by a company called Electronic Metals Ltd.

Jane lives in a futuristic, sophisticated, but emotionally/spiritually bleak society that is eerily like our own. Half of the population is rich and spoiled, and most of that part of society is banal, superficial, and arrogant; the ot...more 5+++ STARS.

Basically, this is the story about a young woman named Jane who falls in love with a sort of futuristic lifelike robotic minstrel/entertainer who is also a sex toy for women/men created by a company called Electronic Metals Ltd.

Jane lives in a futuristic, sophisticated, but emotionally/spiritually bleak society that is eerily like our own. Half of the population is rich and spoiled, and most of that part of society is banal, superficial, and arrogant; the other half lives in the slums, basically trying to survive day by day.

The rich are pre-programmed from birth to look a certain way and subsist on a diet of insta-meals produced by robots for the most part, in tandem with different drugs, both for recreation and other reasons; for instance, Jane takes a certain pill to give her a hair colour that matches the body type that her mother pre-programmed for her since birth. It's all very eerie and Blade-Runner-like. The rich are also raised to react to sex as being very casual and merely for pleasure if nothing else, so intimate relationships aren't really important in their society, not in a real sense.

Jane is one of the rich; however, she is different in character than her mostly superficial and morally depraved friends -- this quality enables her to find beauty in others that is quite unique, and is the main reason why she is able to "see" something in Silver (the robot) while others merely scoff.

This was a really good story although the ending was a bit bereft of conclusion for me, but I understand there was a point to this.

I won't give away what happens in the story, but basically, Lee does question many topics herein -- one of the most important is whether even a robot can have a soul. The story basically concludes that yes, everything has a soul, even non-animate objects, which is sort of an unusual idea to Westerners but is actually quite normal in other religious philosophies. Lee also grapples with the concept of free will and other related ideas; for example, after Jane stops taking her pills, she begins to change physically, which made me question just how much effect her early "programming" had on her to begin with, which interrelates to the theme of the robot's programming as well.

I have noted a pattern with Lee's stories by the way; her stories always seem to include male and female outsiders who don't fit in with society, yet in the end, they seem to pair up and find their niche and we see them for who they truly are -- they are able to find their inner strength and affect the world around them in a positive way. Lee opens up our vision to the beauty of the soul, rather than just plain artifice.

This is what I like about Lee -- she is an author who wants to elevate the human soul as well as spread beauty. Truly a literary genius who has yet to be elevated in her own right. When I see that Stephen King has tons of fans and websites and Tanith Lee has virtually none, it really irks me.(less)

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Mar 28, 2009

Diane rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

Read in April, 2009

This is one of my favorite books. Really it is.

And this in spite of the fact that the premise seems so trivial and absurd at first: a priveleged teenage girl falls in love with a life-like robot, runs away to be with him, and finds that she is now poor, ostracised and hounded, but she's happy. It's so silly in fact, that I probably wouldn't have read the book, if not for the fact that it's a Tanith Lee novel, and one that is much loved by her fans.

The novel is Jane's own...more

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Apr 05, 2009

Becky rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: science-fiction

Read in April, 2009

I loved it. It's not a hard core sex book or anything...sure it mentions sex, but that's about it. There's the romantice quality of a "good woman" being able to give a man/robot (Silver) a soul, but it's also a story about what he does for her too. Jane basically is a young girl who doesn't understand her own feelings & for the man (robot) she loves she strips herself down to the bare basics. She gives up everything she thought defined her as a person. Her friends suck & bring to ...more

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Jun 24, 2008

Janice rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

Read in October, 2006

I love this book and probably have read it about 3 times now. The title makes me feel silly though. The characters and the world are very well written. Its the type of book where you learn just enough about the world to know you are scratching the surface and that there is so much more to it. Like a real place. Anyway, this is the story of Jane. Plain Jane, a rich girl in a futuristic society, who is overshadowed by her famous and pushy mother. She lives literally in a castle in the clouds. Like...more

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Jun 10, 2008

Victoria rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

Read in June, 2009

I've been hearing good things about this one for years, but it's taken me a while to read it. Now I know why.

It started off similarly enough to Tanith Lee's later novel, Biting the Sun (which I never really connected with until the very end)- dystopic future, spoiled rich kids with no personality living in luxury and playing nasty tricks on one another, innocent/jaded protagonist with no idea who she really is. But this book quickly evolves in unique directions that are impossible to...more

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Nov 04, 2007

Josie rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: five-stars

Read in October, 2006

I bawled my eyes out when I read this. It's a love story that will hit you hard - I found myself thinking about it for days after I'd read it. The writing style is typical Tanith Lee (that's a good thing, by the way) but it's more adult than her other books. Essentially it's a story about a girl finding herself through the help of her lover (a robot). Jane (the main character) is shy and insecure, and yet she has the strength to run away from her privileged upper-middle class existence so th...more

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Dec 28, 2008

Laura rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: middle-school-and-up

Read in January, 1995

Ok. Let me preface this by saying that romance books are definitely not my thing. However, Lee is a very talented writer and this book involved many aspects of fantasy that I loved to read when I was a kid, like the insecure nature of the main character, the line between robot and human, the general Romeo and Juliet nature of the story. You could probably call this a futaristic medieval setting... I doubt I would re-read this book, but I can understand why I liked it when I was younger.

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Aug 20, 2009

Goblin Market rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: favorites, romance, sci-fi

Lad dig ikke skræmme af den halvvulgære titel - "Silver Metal Lover" er en fantastisk og skrøbelig kærlighedshistorie, som efterlod mig grædende som et lille barn. Jeg ville ønske at jeg stadig havde den til gode.

(Et ord til advarsel: selvom denne historie er så fantastisk at du har lyst til at læse dens selvstændige fortsættelse, så lad være. "Metallic Love" er en elendig bog der i retrospektiv næsten kan ødelægge dens forgænger.)

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Nov 30, 2009

Tine rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

Read in September, 2009

Tanith Lee's prose is as enjoyable as ever, but the plot is a fanciful, romantic twist on a subject I otherwise consider quite terrifying (robots replacing humanity). Although she might have tried to add some foreboding on the subject, it was lost amongst the love story and angst. Eh. Throw-away novel compared to her other works.

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Apr 14, 2007

Debbie rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: 2006, science-fiction, young-adult

Owns a copy — Read in October, 2006

I'll admit that I've been avoiding this author for years upon years now, ever since a less than pleasant experience with her Gold Unicorn book. But I've heard so many good things about this particular book that I added it to my TBR pile and finally picked it up a few weeks back at a thrift shop for little more than a song. I was wrong about this author, though I'm sad that my initial negative impression of her had lasted for over a decade, making me very reluctant to read anything by Lee until n...more

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Aug 05, 2009

Liza added it (review of isbn 0879977213)

bookshelves: worst-covers

This is just a very impressive book cover. Almost everything about it is awful. The hair is creepy in both color and style. The face is way too defined, and I'm trying to figure out why the individual is wearing what looks like a kiddy sailor suit for adults (completely with doilies). The background looks like a serious rust problem, and as a result the author's name and the book's title get lost in numerous visual tragedies of this cover.

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Oct 20, 2007

Emma rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: Young girls, people who sturggle to accept themselves, and anyone with a heart.

I havnt read many books, but from the ones i have this is my favourite. I have never been so emotional drawn to a book, or felt so close to the characters, or such a connection and relation to the events within the text. I am 16 and for one thing this book has taught me to grow up. I admired Jane's strength to let go of her innocence and step into a wild world where nothing is certain, nothing but her love for silver. I almost cry thinking about this book, it is so poetic and truly is about self...more

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Mar 03, 2010

Jolene rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: scifi, ya-fiction

Read in March, 2010

This book is comparable to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" minus the bounty hunter. What both books do is look at human nature through our interaction with technology. (ex. robots or androids.) And dares to answer the question "What does it mean to be human?"

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Jul 29, 2009

Christina Crooks rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

This superb sci-fi romance about sixteen-year-old Jane and the robot minstrel Silver made me tear up at the end. Unforgettable. An all-out assault on your heartstrings, and as beautiful as its cover art.

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Nov 02, 2008

Nyla rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: romanticals, young-adult

Read in November, 2008

recommends it for: lovers of Twilight

I was curious about this futuristic YA novel because of its cult following. (The book was out of print for a decade until fans petitioned to have it republished.) Initially, I found it very difficult to connect to Jane, the teary, mopey, teenage girl who falls head over heels in love with Silver, a simulated human Adonis (aka robot) who is programmed to please. However, it's a quick read and by the middle I was engaged enough to see where the story was going, and by the end, I shed a few tears. ...more

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Jan 26, 2010

Cat rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: ultimate-faves

This brought out the romantic in me for sure. Such an unusual love story, I never put it down after finishing in, I started it all over again.

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Jan 14, 2010

Jo rated it:

(review of isbn 0553581279)

bookshelves: 2009

This is one of my favourite books, ever. I love the writing, it's so beautiful, and the story is just fantastic. I think I'm a little bit in love with this :)

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