The Flight of the Silvers by Daniel Price

The Flight of the Silvers.  Daniel Price. Blue Rider Press.  February 2014. 608 pp. paperback and e-book. ISBN #: 9780399164989.

A cataclysm beyond imagination is about to occur in America and other places around the globe.  Before it happens, six young people will have different experiences in which they are surrounded by a bubble-like, clear globe that protectively encases them.  Those who are dying around them are unable to penetrate that formidable wall and those inside will have to watch a horrific scene of mayhem and destruction.  They are known as the Silvers and are transported to a small community setting in San Diego in what is known as Altamerica.  Over the next few weeks, they discover they have super-powers with mysterious and frustratingly purposeless repetition. 

One character can run at a speed ten times faster than her former human self.  One receives notes from herself and others about the past, present and future.  One learns to transport himself back to experiences that happened hours past or hours in the future.  Another can create a white structure capable of destroying something in her path but which only operates when she’s angry. On and on it goes.  It takes time for the leaders, or captors, of this community to reveal what they are experiencing and the physicist experiments they are invited to participate in to enhance scientific understanding of the rare phenomenon each is undergoing.  But all isn’t simple and there appears to be people outside of their community who suspect something more devious is being planned.

Add to the mix that history seems to have split down the middle since the middle of the twentieth century so that there are two stories of American history now known.

A grand, brutal, violent, bloody and death-dealing escape happens and the remainder of the story of the Silvers follows their journey across Altamerica as their captors pursue them, now planning destruction rather than scientific experimentation.

The characters Amanda and her sister Hannah, Zach, David, and Mia dominate the tale with other characters, all fueling the constant conflicts threatening to destroy their unified decision to seek the New York community that may help them prevent the future apocalypse that as been predicted.  This dynamic, intense, nerve-wracking and page-turning science fiction novel is the first of a planned trilogy and one which will make true science fiction lovers want to relish over and over, as well as hungrily anticipate the next part of the series.  There’s enough underpinning of quantum physics to make this novel about time and its mysterious elements highly credible and intriguing.

Very nicely crafted, Daniel Price and a winner about credible, fascinating science fiction!