Michelle Sagara's (Chronicles of Elantra) urban fantasy, Silence, is a story about necromancers, but not quite like others you may have read recently. There aren't any armies of the dead, insidious rituals or tête-à-têtes with Satan--instead, Sagara offers a thoughtful, slow-building narrative about friendship, loss and healing.
Silence is told from the perspective of a young woman as she discovers an unusual gift. The bereaved heroine, recovering both from the loss of her father and her boyfriend, is philosophical and often darkly hilarious. Sagara, a mother of two teenagers herself, knows how to create situations and dialogue that feel utterly genuine even when they are fantastic. The characters are all well drawn, but Sagara's depiction of Michael, a teen with autism, is the clear standout. She highlights both the difficulties and rewards of his condition with grace and sensitivity.
Silence probably isn't for everyone. It builds its suspense through painstaking restraint, and revels in the mundane as often as the extraordinary. This is a book for patient readers, especially those who prefer subtlety, to discover rather than to be told. That's not to say that there isn't plenty of action to be had; while not as bloodthirsty as, say, The Hunger Games, Silence has its fair share of violence. But, as the title implies, Sagara's novel is ultimately about the quiet moments that define both comfort and grief. It just so happens that some of those moments occur in a graveyard. --Katherine Montgomery, book nerd