Silence (The Queen of the Dead, #1) in All Challenges All The Time

Sep 08, 2012 Jojobean rated it it was amazing

Shelves: zombie, 2012-publication, series-book-1, 5-star-ratings, hardcover, physical-books-owned

This book was awesome. I liked the way the author gives a different view on necromancers. In this book necromancers use the dead's power to do magic. They don't raise armies of Zombies or use the corpses of bodies. Instead, in this book the spirit or the soul of the dead person is used and controlled. The necromancers in this book use their power in a different way as well. They don't call or raise spirits/ghost; instead they find the already dead spirit and bind them to themselves. Unlike zombi This book was awesome. I liked the way the author gives a different view on necromancers. In this book necromancers use the dead's power to do magic. They don't raise armies of Zombies or use the corpses of bodies. Instead, in this book the spirit or the soul of the dead person is used and controlled. The necromancers in this book use their power in a different way as well. They don't call or raise spirits/ghost; instead they find the already dead spirit and bind them to themselves. Unlike zombies, only necromancers and necromancer hunters can see the dead spirits; unless the necromancer touches the spirit, them it becomes visible to regular people.

Emma is such a necromancer. When she first comes into her power she, is in the cemetery visiting her boyfriend's grave. She sees Eric, the necromancer hunter, and a spirit of a ancient woman who gives Emma a lantern. She also kisses Emma (gross) which causes Emma to flail backward, hit her head on a tombstone and pass out. After this she is plagued by headaches which are her powers manifesting.

The information about necromancers, their powers and the hunters are spread throughout the book. You are not given all the answers at once which kinda was annoying. I wanted Emma to be more demanding b/c well it is her life. Its seems that whatever answers Eric wants to give her, She takes but when he wants to stop talking she doesn't push harder for more. I'd be all up in his face until he told me everything.

Emma was a good character. I liked her alot. She wanted to use her power for good and to help the dead move on instead of binding them and harnessing their power. Eric was a good character as well, seeing the good side of Emma which caused him to not try to kill her. Chase was very funny. I really liked Michael as well and the great way he was with children (dead and not dead) was a great characteristic to include in the book. Allison was cool but not much was said about her except that she was Emma's best friend and could read her thoughts (in a best friend way, not supernatural). I liked Amy alot also because while she was the most popular girl she wasn't a mean cold hearted bitch. She was caring, she cared about Michael and helped him. She also took everything that Emma, Eric and Chase told her really well, without freaking out and still decided to help them. Emma's dead father, Brendan Hall, was a very touching character and it was sweet the way he still helped his baby girl even though he was dead. He helped her any way he could and stayed with her (even after she help the other spirits to move on. The spirits bounded to Emma we also very good characters; they helped Emma with Andrew and helped her with the evil necromancer. The two children were especially cute and I love the way they loved to play with Michael. All around there were really no bad characters and no one who really annoyed me to the point of me wishing for their death.

The plot was good as well. Of course since this is the first book in the series many chapters are set to give information about the world the author was building as well as how Emma comes into her power. This author also has two very exciting and action filled points that make the book. Once was the burning house where a four year old dead boy, Andrew, was trapped and the other was the necromancer Merrick Longland who at first entered the story to "save" Emma from Eric and Chase (the necromancer hunters) and take her with him so she could learn about her "gift". Then when Emma unbound a spirit from him and accidently bound the ghost to herself, it was all about him finding other ghosts to bind to himself so he can do magic. Of course it happened that Longland went after Andrew (the boy caught in the fire) because he was a very powerful ghost.

The story of Andrew was very sad. There was a fire in his house at night. His mother who had her two other small children went to wake him up and told Andrew to follow her. Andrew wanted his mother to carry him too but she couldn't. So his mother, Maria, took her two other children out side with the intention of going back for Andrew. However the fire blocked the door and she couldn't reach him, so he died from smoke inhalation. Now I know that this part of the plot was done so that we can see how Emma uses her power for good, by taking Maria back to the burned down house and going in with her to get Andrew out. If they didn't then Andrew would have been stuck in the house reliving the fire over and over forever.

Like I said I know this situation was created for the plot but I do have to say that if that was a real situation, there is no way I would leave my kid in a burning house. No fucken way. Maria could have had Andrew climb on her back or dragged him with her or find some way to get him out with her, which is what I would of done; not tell him to follow her and leave him there. She could have done something to get him out with her. I could help but think about this while reading the book. It made me angry because while the book was great, I hate reading about dead/dying children. It just doesn't sit well with me. I mean yes, Emma freed his spirit from the house but he's still dead. And that really sucks.

The ending was good too with the battle between Longland and his necromancers and Eric and Chase. I liked how Emma used her powers (she sort of astral projected her spirit from her body)to free the spirits from the other necromancers who were using magic to stop Eric and Chase. The ending was victorious with Eric and Chase killing Longland and Andrew being saved from the burning house. I also liked when Emma used her powers to help the spirits to get to their afterlife (for some reason they were blocked from going there). I almost cried when Andrew told his mom that he wanted to go there and that he would wait for her and his siblings. I'm choking up typing the word right now.

I can't wait for the next book of this series. We still don't know anything about the woman that Eric, Chase and Emma saw in the mirror. I'm guessing she's going to be the new threat in the next book (she told Emma she was going to kill her after Emma helped the spirits move on). I get the feeling that Eric was a necromancer before he became a hunter so hopefully we'll learn more about him. I also wanna see where things head for Emma and Eric. Also very last two sentences are cliffhangers because Emma saw Nathan and it book ended with them holding hands. OOOOOO I Can't wait!!! ...more

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