THE SONG OF THE ORPHANS

In the second of a series, a group of people escaping the destruction of our world use their newly discovered superpowers to save both themselves and the parallel world where they’ve landed.

Enough time has passed since the publication of the previous doorstopper-sized volume, The Flight of the Silvers (2014), that Price has helpfully provided a stick figure–decorated recap section on his website (danielprice.info/recap). Our heroes were rescued from San Diego and marked with silver bracelets by a family of time travelers—Semerjean, Esis, and Azral Pelletier—as our world was crushed out of existence. The Silvers find themselves in an alternate America, a racist and isolationist country with terrible movies and awful pizza but with the technology to support flying restaurants and extend the lives of beloved pets for decades. True, now the Silvers all have a unique ability to bend time. But this world, too, is doomed to be destroyed in four years. In the short term, the Gothams, a group of New York–based families with similar powers, think that killing the Silvers will save their world, and a powerful and ruthless government agency is after them. More dangerous still are the Pelletiers; while they’ll often step in to (violently) defend the Silvers, they’re also willing to punish the Silvers for getting romantically involved with one another. Can the Silvers make peace with the Gothams and the government, find the other refugees from their world, discover the Pelletiers’ weak spot, and prevent their adopted world’s destruction? The action is unrelenting, the body count and the emotional toll are high, the revelations are twisty and brutal, and allegiances shift constantly; as in the previous installment, you may need a score card to keep up.

A worthy and thrilling follow-up to The Flight of the Silvers; the wait for Book 3 will be tough to bear.