Silver Stars

The second book in the ‘Front Line’s’ series by Michael Grant was much better than the first installment. It still dragged on in places, but the themes and characters were really starting to gain momentum. The story starts off with Jenou asking Rio about what it was like her first time. If these were normal girls Jenou could have easily been asking Rio about losing her virginity but it only takes a paragraph to realize that is not what Jenou is talking about. Rio is starting to gain a reputation amongst the other soldiers as being a cold-blooded killer. Rio fights this reputation and nickname ‘Killer Rick’ for a long while before eventually admitting to Jenou later in the book that she did in fact enjoy killing the Germans. This book was a lot darker than the first, not that the first was all sunshine and daisies to begin with. Rio is struggling to come to terms with who she is, Frangie is struggling with her faith and starting to notice the real horrors of war, and Rainey, poor Rainey, gets to see firsthand the brutality of the Nazi’s. The three characters grow up a lot during the duration of this book more so than in the other one. It was brutal and heartbreaking to read. Rio remarks at one point that when the first member of their squad died there were days to mourn, by the second it was only a few hours. Again, I felt the story lacked vivid imagery to put myself in the characters shoes but in this book, it didn’t bother me as much. Something else that bothered me was that it would drag on occasionally. My eyes would glaze over certain paragraphs describing the battles or military movements when it would get wordy. I would be super invested while reading the book but if I set it down for more than a day I would sort of forget about it. It didn’t nag at me the way I like books too. All in all it was a solid sequel and I am definitely going to start the third installment.