Lucy Tonks (the invisible life of a reader)'s Reviews > The Silvered Serpents

"Love does not always wear the face we wish,” she said. “I wish my love had been more beautiful. I wish … I wish we had more time."

4.5
I'm honestly not okay. This book completely destroyed me. After everything that happened in book one, I did not expect this to be a happy book, but I did not expect to feel such intense emotions! I especially did not expect this pain. It took me by surprise. Why do I love painful books?


It's been months since I actually read this book and I still feel the pain like I finished it yesterday and not five months ago. I don't even know how I'm supposed to write this review. I always find it really hard to write reviews for books like this that I really loved and made me go through a roller coaster of emotions.


Severin and his friends may have been successful, but it came at a terrible cost. Now, they are all lost in grief after the events of the previous book. Desparate to righten his wrongs, Severin purses an artefact that is rumoured to possess the powers of God. Their hunt lured them to Russia and as hidden secrets come to light and the past they've been running from catches up with them, the crew will discover hidden and new dimensions of themselves. But that will bring them to a path they never thought they would walk on.


"Most myths are just truths covered in cobwebs."


The Silvered Serpents is a tale of betrayals and love, with our crew risking their lives for this new mission, that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very last page and when you are done with the book you will not know what to do with yourself. Every expectation that you have from this book  erase from your mind, everything you think you know, erase from your minds as Roshani Chokshi will shatter your expectations and build something new from them, that will end up hurting you.


I don't think I will ever forgive the author for what she did for me. Did she write this stunning, amazing, beautiful I'm running out of adjectives to describe how much I love the story book? Yes, but I did not give her consent to hurt me this much. My heart literally stopped more than once in the last 50 pages.


After The Gilded Wolves, everything is changed. Even the feel of the story has changed. While during the first book, we had skme more funny, light-hearted moments, this book was so much darker. It explores grief and the pain it brings in such beautiful ways through our cast of characters. I may be cursing our amazing author for the pain she caused me, but she managed to portray grief and loss in such a realistic way, and for that, I can only praise her.


"How could someone hold so much love and so many demons in one heart?

The moment that I knew this book would break me..


Severin has detached himself from everything and wants to play god to avoid his actual feelings. We see so many new sides of him that we have not seen previously. We thought we knew him, but we really didn't. There was so much more to his character that was only revealed because of his grief. Severin believes all that has happened is his fault and he doesn't know how to leave with that. Death hit him the hardest out of everyone and to punish himself, he didn't let himself see the light that is beyond all that darkness. There were times when I felt like sobbing and there were other times when I felt like strangling him so he would understand he is not alone in this experience. He has his friends who will always be by his side if he asks, but he pushes them away out of fear.


"You alwags see so clearlt into the darkness of men's hearts, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie," she said, before adding in a softer voice, "But I remember when yiu used to see wonder."


Laila doesn't feel the joy she used to when baking. All it brings now is pain and memories she would rather forget. She is struggling a lot with the person she is and how she wants to spend the time she has left. She wants to enjoy life to the fullest, but the circumstances that she is in make it so hard for her and at this point, she doesn't know how to handle everything, all at once.


Zofia goes back to Poland, in the beginning, just to get away from her memories. She is my favourite character in this series and deserves the world. She is one of the few characters that I've read about that have autism the only other one probably being Ty from The Dark Artifices. Zofia has grown so much since the beginning. Now, she is starting to step out of her comfort zone more and more if it means she would be able to help her friends. She learns that being brave doesn't mean you have no fear. Every scene where she was present was automatically a favourite of mine. She just always managed to make every scene even better and I just love seeing her grow throughout the story.


Enrique just wants to be heard. So many people ignore him even his friends do taht at times and he doesn't know what to do in order for his ideas to be taken into consideration. Possibly, only one person was actually listening to him. Zofia was there for him for so much of the story and just tried to help him as much as possible. She cared for him and hated seeing him in the state he was in. I honestly never wanted this much to be able to hug fictional characters. He really needs all the hugs he can get.


And now we have Hypnos. I have really mixed feelings about him. For the most part, he was trying to be someone he isn't and I hate him for what he did. I understand he is going through something, but please do not lead people on just to make yourself feel better. He was just trying to get himself to fit in, but the way he did that... I would never be able to forgive him for that.


"I envy you because you can look at yourself. You can bear your own reflection, knowing you can shoulder the weight of every choice you made and regret you carry. That is a rare thing as one gets older."


The romance in this one... *deep breaths* I don't even know where to begin. The angst between Severin and Laila physically pained me. With every interaction between them that I read, it was like someone was stabbing me in the heart over and over again. Then we also have the love triangle between Hypnos, Enrique, and Zofia. Before you ask, I'm a Zorique shipper I just believe there's mkre chemestry between them rather than Hypnos and Enrique so you can guess how that went for me.


"When the devil waged war in the heavens, even angels had to fall."


I really loved the plot of the book, but I feel like it dragged at times. One of the things you need to know before going into this novel is that this is a character driven story, not plot driven. While you get an interesting and well-written plot, the emphasis has been since the beginning on the cast of characters. you could probably tell this even from my review as I focused more on talking about the characters than the plot


We finally got a better understanding of the world building and the magic system! In The Gilded Wolves, even by the end of the book, I still remained confused about how everything worked out, but The Silvered Serpents finally answered my questions and got rid of all of the confusion there was. I actually understood how their magic worked! but don't ask me to explain it as I wouldn't be able to


I do have to say, I think it's a bit weird that even tho this book took place in Russia, we didn't see that much of it.. We got so many other cool things that this isn't a real complaint about the story. It's just something that I've noticed while reading.


"--perhaps monsters were misunderstood gods; deities with plans too grand for humans; a phantom of evil that drank from the roots of good."


I thought the ending for the first book was bad, but this was so much worse. When I say that my heart stopped, I'm not joking. I was barely breathing. There was something that happened that made me so scared. I just started crying and having a panic attack. The ending of this book terrified me with all that pain. Who knew I could get a panic attack from a novel?


"That is the devil. When a man cannot see a person as a person, then the devil has slipped into him and is peering out of his eyes."


After months since first experiencing the true pain that is this book, I finally wrote this review, and I'm ready to finish the series. The blame goes entirely on my review slump and on school for that. Anyway, this has become one of my favourite trilogies of all time, there's just something so unique about it that I just love it and please don't let the bad reviews keep you away from this series. It's totally worth a try as what you really have to lose if you try it? Nothing!


"The first and the last, the beginning and the end."