Reviews
Tansy Raynor Roberts reviewed it for AS if! (Australian SpecFic in Focus): here’s the link.
Stephanie Gunn reviewed it on HorrorScope here.
Lucy Sussex wrote this review in the Sunday Age, 17 Sept 2006:
“Australia has some world class purveyors of fantasy, and a minor industry developing new writers in the field. Grace Dugan is one of them. This novel, her debut, is a long young adults, with crossover potential. Three people come of age in an imaginary land. Two are revolutionary fighters, another the kingdom’s rightful, hidden heir. The Silver Road acutely observes the universal teen pressures and interweaves a three-strand plot with ease. The setting is more Scherezade than Tolkien, and the treatment has some of the sparse, cool deliberations of Le Guin. The book is also beautifully designed. Dugan is a writer worth watching.”
Faren Miller wrote this review in her column in Locus, Nov 2006:
“Playing catch-up with overseas publications again. I’ve just seen Grace Dugan’s first novel The Silver Road, a fantasy that may be labelled as YA primarily because each of its three plot threads involves a protagonist in their teens. Like some recent works by Ursula K. Le Guin (and the Nina Kiriki Hoffman book I’ll deal with next) there’s nothing tame or watered-down-for-kids here; Dugan fully acknowledges the world’s brutality, whether she’s dealing with political scheming, warfare, or the mere struggle for existence in a monarchy beset with rebellion.
“In a land that seems more Asian, or antipodean, than European, a usurper has taken over the kingship and things are going from bad to worse. One protagonist grows up among common folk with no idea she’s the old king’s missing heir; another is the tomboy daughter of a priveliged house; the third, a baron’s lesser son, excels in swordplay. They’re young, impulsive (in their different ways), and still learning to navigate in a world that will thward their dreams more often than fulfill them.
“Zuven, the erstwhile princess, has long wanted to join a peaceful religious order, and the truth of her heritage will dismay her. Tomboyish and sociall awkward Yelela intends to become a female soldier, unaware of the prejudice she’ll encounter at the academy. Haga, raised to be part of the military, envisions himself as a champion swordsman until one reckless deed sends him into flight. None of them have any kind of magical powers — the closest thing to magic in this book is a few strange dreams.
“Instead of following obvious paths to predetermined destinies, the three of them provide a more intimate perspective on the working of earthly power: through Zuven’s reluctant participation in political gamesmanship while she undergoes a “Pygmalion” upgrade from farm girl to aristocrat; Yelela’s harsh experience at the academy, followed by grimmer scenes of battle; and Haga’s attempts to recover from the mess he got into after he tried to be a hero. In a kingdom plagued by war on one front, rebellion on another, each will grow into a person they had no intention of becoming.
“Eavesdropping on their thoughts, we encounter their world’s true complexity. When Yelela sees the commander of the king’s guards — ‘responsible for the worst that had happened in the kingdom, the darkest evil’ — at a memorial service, she finds no horrific abstraction:
‘[T]here he stood in the flesh, a human being of bones and blood like anyone else, smiling and being charming, laughing even.’ The ’snakepit of baronial politics’ and the other crises of their time (which touch all three, together and apart) will eventually force them into some of the same moral compromises and failures their idealistic younger selves regarded as sheer villainy. The results, which can recall the tragic ironies in a Shakespearean history play, also provide some fascinating surprises — very different from those standard tales where pride always suffers a fall, and a favored few live ‘happily ever after.’
“Despite its exotic setting and archaic cultures, The Silver Road comes to seem almost shockingly real. It’s a remarkable debut.”
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