The world was never described enough to solidify in my head, and there are too many questions about it that were never answered. My main issue with Silverlock is that while the major themes are deep, the setting and characters are shallow. In fact, the whole book could be seen and a metaphor: a spiritually lost man finding himself through literature and stories. The importance of story telling and creativity is secondary theme-it is a book about stories, after all. This is the lesson that Shandon ultimately has to learn. Life is a story with a plot and a purpose. At every turn, his insistence that life is meaningless seems more and more ridiculous. Throughout the novel Shandon’s apathy is at odds with the world of stories that he journeys through. This leads into the main message of the book. In a way, Shandon is “the modern man,” governed by reason and resigned to an absence of any higher power than his own mental capacities. Myers doesn’t put him on a pedestal or pretend that he is more heroic or moral than he is. This may actually be intentional: as Shandon is apathetic toward life, so the reader is apathetic toward him (or, at least, I was). He does go through some substantial development and is tolerable by the end, but I never felt particularly invested in his wellbeing. At the beginning he’s pretentious, selfish, and shallow he lives in the moment, never thinking to question his surroundings or how he got there. The main character and narrator, Shandon, is also of note.
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I have about an average knowledge of literature and mythology, and while I caught enough references to make the reading enjoyable, I missed about as many.
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Thus, if you haven’t read many classics or are not familiar with mythology, Silverlock is going to be one long string of confusion. The real joy of the book is recognizing characters and symbols from other books-references to Moby Dick, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the Odyssey all surface within the first couple of chapters. Silverlock is about his adventures in this new world. Clarence Shandon is shipwrecked and finds himself in a land inhabited by literary, mythological, and historical characters. First and foremost, shout out to my fellow lover of literature, Claire, for recommending and lending this book to me!Ī quick plot blurb is in order: A.