Ep 64 Silver Elite…CONTROVERSIES, CONSPIRACIES, & BRUTALLY HONEST REVIEWS!

Well… Ashley and Liz put a hold on their neverending TBR pile and rearranged the entire podcast schedule to yap with y’all about this book. Silver Elite by “New York Times bestselling author” Dani Francis (🤔) has taken the book world by storm seemingly overnight and had to investigate for themselves with their very first conspiracy episode. 👽🛸👽 OooOooO Spooky.

"In this episode of Besties and the Books podcast, hosts Liz and Ashley dive into the viral dystopian romance novel Silver Elite by the mysterious Dani Francis, launching their first "conspiracy theory" episode after so much discord and controversy from this book's debut. They dissect the book’s striking similarities to Fourth Wing, speculate on its sudden rise to fame, and explore wild theories about the anonymous author’s identity—including the possibility that it’s a pseudonym for a canceled author, a male writer trying to enter the romance space, or even an AI-generated experiment. They also compare Silver Elite to Red Tower’s Shield of Sparrows, which was oddly released on the same day, and critique the writing for its lack of character depth, inorganic romance, and robotic spice scenes. Along the way, they share personal dystopian media favorites and fails, emphasize their skepticism about Silver Elite's hype, and encourage listeners to join the fun—and the speculation."

And… is it actually good? It’s dystopian, it’s fantasy… it’s enemies to lovers in a military setting… but how does it stack up to other books in the same genre? Find out what we thought about it and if we think it deserves the hype… and what we think about the extremely “similar” book published on the exact same day by Red Tower? 👀

Go down the rabbit hole with us as we investigate. And don’t worry, we have a dystopian fave and fail and smash or pass locked and loaded for ya! 

Don't be shy, subscribe! New Podcasts every Tuesday!! (And sometimes Friday!…)

Check out these author interviews? ⬇️

We interviewed Callie Hart all about her NYT Bestseller Quicksilver! Watch it here! | https://youtu.be/CED5s7qDBdQ?si=8xtIRO1IzX6Rsld4

Check the official Author Interview with Lindsay Straube of Split or Swallow! Now a Barnes & Noble & Amazon best seller titled: Kiss of the Basilisk!  https://youtu.be/fknhocSNIKM

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Shop bookish apparel worn in this episode!

Ashley is Wearing: Lord of the Rings "Even Darkness Must Pass" T-shirt from @etsy | * https://go.magik.ly/ml/2cqg0/

Liz is wearing: Book Dragon Crewneck by @readbyerin_ | https://shopreadbyerin.com/password?fbclid=PAQ0xDSwKrWBVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABp68SFgFpy9NrtMxA2nANvSKVSehZTwGU6RbeMKvsb4wyhLUy4-Tex4bVAXFW_aem_892_3BIjMKphutGnBUtU7w

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Chapters

• 0:00 Spoiler Free Intro
• 3:30 Fav and Fail Dystopian Edition
• 9:46 Silver Elite Book Reviews and Ratings
• 16:09 5 Sentence Silver Elite Book Summary
• 19:26 Speculating the Author “Dani Francis” behind Silver Elite
• 28:28 Silver Elite Controversies and Conspiracy Theories
• 1:00:00 Tropes, Characters, and things We Loved and Hated in Silver Elite
• 1:14:34 Silver Elite GoodReads Reviews
• 1:21:05 Unhinged Smash or Pass

Transcript

0:00

we have a mention of long fingers we did recycling a lot of the same ideas from Fourth Wing but then just not putting the dragons in and you know what the font it's almost papyrus maybe that's what it is you want to go farther down the conspiracy conspiracy hole that's what we're here for conspiracy[Music] welcome to the Besties in the Books podcast i'm Liz and I'm Ashley and today we are going to be doing a bit of a conspiracy theory deep dive into this dystopian air quotes major military romanty book that seems to be taking the book world by storm a silver storm if you will it is silver elite by Danny Francis question mark i love it so I love that you put conspiracy no you didn't put conspiracy in air quotes you put uh dystopian in air quotes because that's how I feel too so we'll get into that we'll get into that allegedly it's a dystopia allegedly i mean it is but we'll see so this episode is our first official like conspiracy theory you know kind of episode so what's the deal with Silver Elite like if you're in the book world in any capacity you're probably if you haven't read it already wondering that too right and so it's like where did it come from what do we know about the author why are there so many weird theories floating around about it so like when we saw this book come onto the scene we were immediately like we have to readjust our schedule we have to fit this book in because we need to know for ourselves what the deal is with Silver yeah so for science for science yeah for science so that's where we're at today we're going to be talking about some of the popular theories that we've seen floating around uh yeah like Bookstagram book talk um you know we will be doing our typical reaction style video so we will be talking about plots you know plots we liked the plot we liked um we'll be talking all about tropes we liked tropes we didn't like characters um you know if it's worth reading the next one etc but we also will be talking about do we buy into any of these theories do we maybe have some of our own do we feel like any of them have any merit or is it just a way to hype up another book right is it worth reading do we recommend it to you guys um so the first 15 minutes or so will be spoilerfree so that we can tell you exactly that we'll give you our spoiler-free star and spice rating um pretty much right out of the gate so that you guys can decide if you want to continue on or not yeah mhm definitely um but before we get into all that we just want to say thank you for being here thank you guys so much for being here happy Tuesday or whatever day you're popping this into your ear we appreciate you guys make sure to like follow and subscribe we're at Besties in the Books podcast everywhere you like to listen to your favorite podcast including YouTube also on Instagram and Tik Tok where you can find out like what we're reading kind of what books are coming up next down the pipeline for us so you can prepare yourselves hold on to that headboard baby cuz Silver Elite's coming silver Elite is coming in all of its glory shark we'll see we'll talk about it so okay let's just kick off today's episode with a fave and fail but we're going to do dystopia edition and not like dystopia air quotes but like real dystopia fave and fail and you know this is just of our lives just something that we really enjoyed something that we didn't enjoy or whatever um do you want to go first you want me to go first today um shoot shoot your shot go Boo okay okay i don't know if I've talked about this before on here or not but if I haven't then here you go and if I have here you go again because No I'm not sorry i feel like if you're not watching this show there's only one season okay if you're not watching Fallout you have to watch Fallout okay like literally there's one season the second one they are It did get renewed so they're making a second season but it's not out for a while so no excuses there's only like what 10 episodes maybe you know what I mean like total um but it's so good it's like apparently based on a video game i'm not a video game person so I've never played it i had never heard of it until my husband suggested that we watch it and as far as dystopian media goes like TV movies whatever in my opinion it's like one of the best I've ever seen like the plot is so good and unique and just super interesting and the music's great it's shot really well if you guys are on the Walton Gogggins train as I have been on since I don't know I think I figured this out the other day i've liked him since I watched Justified which was a long time ago so if you guys love him he plays a great character in the show so yeah that is some good like romcoms like about 10 years ago I think when he was coming up onto the scene yeah i have to go like back through his like movie cuz I feel like my Yeah like my majority of experiences with good old Walton have been on TV shows so it's like you know obviously The Righteous Gemstones um he's great in that and then yeah in Fallout in Justified recently he's been in White Lotus and seems to be getting a lot of attention for that but I haven't watched the new season of White Lotus yet so I'm not sure um but yeah so very good go check it out if you haven't it is a little gory so just know that but hey not scary just gory so and then um my fail that I actually decided to do for this was that I have never read Divergent and I've never read Maze Runner like literally at all so someday I feel like I want to go down those paths because obviously they have pretty strong fandoms as well but yeah I just I have the books did I ever read them no not yet but I did watch the movies and I liked them so I don't know why I didn't read the books but here we are you know after going on this recent Hunger Games journey where I read it for the first time I definitely want to give Divergent a chance so perhaps a miniseries in 2026 maybe you know well especially after a you know a lot of people are comparing just to bring it right back around Silver Lead to Divergent so I don't know i can't speak to that because I've never read it yeah and I watched I think most of the movies but I don't remember them enough now to I don't remember compare it to that but we'll talk about Hunger Games cuz they were selling it as a Hunger Games for adults and we have a lot to say about that i mean at least I do liz and I pretty much didn't talk about anything so no we'll see brand new information i do too i do too you guys will be the first to Same with us we're right there with you yep so what are your dystopian what's a dystopian fave and fail for you well a fail a fail could be that I maybe I should have done Fallout instead of Last of Us cuz you guys are losing me losing me hard last of Us is boring i said what I said i stand by what I said i have no interest in watching season 2 i Googled the spoilers because I wanted to know what happens but like I don't care to watch it it's losing the fact that I started watching it knowing the major spoiler for season 2 and it didn't stop me from watching it makes me feel like maybe I won't care you know what I mean does that make sense so hey well and also I loved The Walking Dead until it got super repetitive and it's so it feels kind of like this could easily be where Walking Dead picked up at and I would not keep watching it it's just the same blah blah blah blah blah story so um like I get it i would have probably liked it better had I not seen like seven seasons of that but my actual fail I was gonna say before that is I still haven't watched season two of Severance so Oh I still haven't started Severance so yeah so there you go we got a laundry list of dystopian stuff to watch my fave I still will always have a special place in my heart for the Giver so that dystopian world is so fascinating to me and just kind of you know picking apart all the different political themes and suppression that was going on in that community i still can relate to different dystopian novels that we read in our adulthood so that's a fave that's a fave of mine what can I say if you haven't read it go read it if you didn't read it in school I didn't read it in school i had to pick it up on my own and read it as an adult yeah and it was still very good so there you go i think that's what makes dystopian books that kind of like stand out that you know we grew up with so important is that they do kind of help you like establish a framework to like analyze future dystopian media that you consume totally yeah so just it kind of gives you some context um so that you can critically analyze books like Silver Elite for example for example okay so should we just give our spoilerfree star and spice ratings for good old Silver Elite good old Silver Elite let's do it let's go silver Elite in my opinion tried to do too many things and did none of them well and for that reason I rated it three stars because it was still mildly entertaining i wasn't bored by it but I was not impressed at all by it either so yeah three stars and then I would rate it like a two spice because it had some spice but it wasn't anything i don't know nothing to write home about and it wasn't very frequent so two I'm sticking I'm locking it in a two spice and a three star that's not looking too good guys like it's not good what about you so for my personal life and reviews and how I like books it's a three star for me i don't I'm going to preface this by saying I think that this book is going to be very polarizing in general it seems like it is it seems like people are either obsessed with it or they don't like it at all whatsoever so with that said I also don't typically like contemporary romances very much military romance those kinds of things so that's where for me it's a three star if if I'm rating it as a romance book with like some other things happening maybe a four star if you like that sort of genre you know kind of academia you know adolescent they're not adolescence but you know it's a little young okay i think I think the FMC is like 20 and the MMC is like 22 so they're pretty young yeah they're pretty young yeah so take that with what you will okay so for me my personal review is going to be this it's a fourthwing military romance but without the dragons so what's the point also it's kind of just cosplaying as dystopian so I'm out that's what I'm saying i felt like it was cosplaying as everything it was like is this really a romance okay maybe is this really dystopian not really is this really fantasy kind of like is it sci-fi maybe like you know what I mean i'm like I don't know it tried to be too many things like you said it tried to be too many things and there are some authors I feel like you know that can be multiple things like Fourth Wing for example before it went downhill with the next sequels like the Fourth Wing original book it was like you know that was technically I mean it was definitely fantasy it was definitely romance it was definitely military it was you know Yeah it It was many multiple layers but I felt like it was done well and woven together in a way that made sense this was kind of just like I felt like a lot of things fell flat for me yes agreed yeah i needed more agreed so based off of that who do you think this would be good for[Laughter] who would you recommend it to h well I have to say that I don't know i don't know this stumps me cuz I thought about it and I'm like because if someone was like "Hey what's a good romanty that I should start with?" I wouldn't recommend it if someone was like "Yeah what's a good dystopian book to start with?" I wouldn't recommend it like there Do you know what I mean i don't Yeah cuz they didn't like they didn't knock it out of the park with any specific genre they tried to pack in there no like it would never go to the top of my list as like there's just so many other books before that that I would recommend so I don't really know like I feel like maybe like anyone who enjoys romantic or dystopia but just don't set your sights too high don't set your expectations too high i don't know from I took like a gander at some reviews out there and what people were saying and stuff it seems like the people that do love it I am generalizing so let me preface this by that this isn't everybody but for the mo the consensus seems to be they they like that it was an easy read and it was fast and easy on the brain it wasn't long wasn't cumbersome you know so and you know and it was more romanceheavy for them so if the thought of military romance and with a little bit of different elements sprinkled in sounds like your jam I think you'll love it it's you know it's simple maybe that's what it is i think you know and I even put a note in here later on maybe because I haven't read I don't think I've read any military romances like I think this is other than Fourth Wing which is technically military but Yeah technically fantasy level yeah yeah um but just like a like we'll say contemporary uh contemporary or dystopian like I haven't read anything like that like modern world kind of or futuristic uh military romance like I just haven't really and so I'm like maybe that if we read another one and had something to compare it to you know what I mean then I would have a better idea of if they're similar enough to recommend it to other people who are into that kind of romance i don't know well I feel like I can confidently say for both of us that Liz and I don't really enjoy academia style romance books either very much they have to be done like in a very specific way you know for us to like them just because for us you know at least for me it's just a little like there's too many catty side games going on and very juvenile i feel like lots of time i don't like that i don't so if but some people do like I get it you like the tea you like the drama not that there's like a ton it's a you get a little bit of it you know what I mean it's like is are they going to find out about us sneaking around it's kind of the things that I didn't like about Fourth Wing or this book only so take out the dragons say what you will about that yeah so okay should we just get into our five sentence summary spoiler section let's go yeah spoilers coming if I didn't scare you enough now's the time to be scared go away no I'm just kidding save it to your playlist we'll watch it later when you finish this book if you don't want to be spoiled okay well I've got my five sentence summary ready i'll get my gong ren Darlington is a 20-year-old quote unquote modified orphan growing up in a post-apocalyptic United States under the tyrannical rule of Merrick Redden the man who led a coup 25 years ago that overthrew the old government assassinated their president created the ward system and essentially led a genocide to exterminate all people who developed special powers from the fallout like her[Music] one one sounds like it's making for an interesting story right right right right okay ren's parents died fighting in the rebellion so Jim their modified good friend and high up rebellion leader defected and took her to live in hiding for 5 years burned off her mark that identifies her as a modified then moved her to a ranch where they've been living a quiet life ren is telepathic she can incite people to do things against their will she can read minds and she can protect project images from her mind to others making her one of the most powerful modified on the continent two one night Ren is hooking up with a random guy at her best friend Tana's inn when she tries to leave and bumps into a hot stranger who's clearly in the military she leaves to go to the town celebration with her friend when a boy is almost killed by a fox so she shoots it from super far away revealing to the military presence that she is likely more than she seems so they seize the ranch execute Jim and decide that she will be training in their military elite unit or she could go to jail[Music] three Ren begins training with other recruits whose goal is to become part of the silver elite covert ops unit and although she starts off wanting to sabotage her chances in order to get out she uses her telepathy to communicate with the rebellion and instead becomes an active double agent working to take down the company from the inside even though she's grown to be close friends with many of her fellows and has fallen in love with Cross the son of the general the mysterious military man from the beginning and Wolf her childhood friend who she thought she'd never met but only communicated with through her mind[Music] four ren helps the rebellion complete a series of attacks including an explosion that kills several of her fellows including Kane one of her best friends there who we later find out is alive as the famous rebel pilot another that allowed Adrienne her rebel leader to infiltrate one of the generals parties and use her mind to scramble his brain causing Taylor the oldest Red and brother to take over as general and one that causes Tana to be sent to work in a salt mine and when her cover is blown by Litty her oldest friend there who she thought she could trust she escapes with Cross's help across the Blacklands where she joins up with the rebellion but Cross stays behind[Music] five five so like on paper it sounds Well you lost me again though i had to just relive all that what do we know about Silver Elite okay so since we're talking about conspiracy theories we need to like examine what is this book etc where did it come from all those kinds of things so the author is Danny Francis that's all we know a New York Times bestselling author writing under a pen name okay so I looked this up supposedly the fact that it's a New York Times bestselling author writing under a pen name came straight from the publisher in a press release so that supposedly has been confirmed yeah supposedly but now I'm hearing that that was now scrubbed and that was never said but there are people that originally got the arcs and stuff that were sold it that way but also but honestly New York Times bestseller can mean a lot of things yeah totally if you look up Danny Francis the only information we can find is this really short bio which is the same one that's at the end of Silver Elite so Danny Francis is an avid reader a lover of all things breakfast and a hopeless romantic when not creating highstakes fantasy worlds and complex characters you can find Danny spending time with family or trying to figure out why the printer never works right which we love that but something I did find interesting conspiracy or not I don't know okay so the bio this is from Amazon okay the bio at the end of Silver Elite just like the little about the author section is this exact thing verbatim except for instead of saying you can find Danny spending time with family it says you can find her spending time with family so one uses a pronoun and one the pronoun is intentionally omitted oh well okay so maybe that helps us narrow things down or it doesn't but yeah it's a difference that I noticed i was like interesting okay so um I looked up if they have any other works we don't know because all we know pen name yeah cuz it's a pen name under this pen name no so cuz I know obviously a lot of authors will have you know a pen name pseudonym and then they will write a whole bunch of books under that name or whatever because they do different genres um so far this is the only one that is in existence for this particular author we need to talk about pen names for a second but I just have to say a shout out to Pen Cole who on threads while this was all like getting you know hashed out in the Discord was she's like"You guys I have to come clean i had to go with the pen name Pen Cole because Penis Coca-Cola wasn't safe for publishing or something hilarious like that." I'm like "Oh my gosh loved that." Okay so let's talk about pen names for a second here because yeah there's a lot of discord about that are authors should they be allowed to be anonymous should they be allowed to work under a pen name without getting doxed yeah totally yeah totally everyone do that we are going to sit here and speculate our theories in a minute on who this author could be if we know um but I don't think you need to do that the only reason why I think we're taking that leap here is because it was used as a selling and marketing tactic most of the time pen names are just put out there you know they're just there you go let them let them lose no one cares it just is what it is but because this was such a strong foothold for these publishing houses to say "Hey New York Times bestselling." allegedly it's I haven't looked it up to see if it's really been scrubbed or not but that was how I knew about it that's the first things that I saw well and it was everywhere the PR campaign insane yeah everybody that got in PR was saying it i saw I still am getting ads on Instagram stories for this book and then whatever that monthly book club is so yeah that's So when you you're opening yourself up to that speculation mhm totally so in that case you're using it to sell more books you're using it to sell more books you're going to gain that cur i think it's completely intentional so I think they want to speculate they want people to talk about it is it cool yeah i mean you know Yeah i think that there's a differentiation there too because Yeah when you use it for a marketing technique you're using it to sell your book it was intentionally put out there like then I feel like that opens up the door to give people permission to guess who it is also there's in my opinion there's a big difference between people just guessing for fun and actually trying to dock someone like that's a completely different thing um because people should be allowed their anonymity but it's like then why are you going out there telling people Yeah he he like you don't know who I am but I'm actually really famous yeah exactly oh you know it's like if you don't want people to try to speculate about who you are don't do that you just publish it you just move on with your life like most of them yeah or you be truly anonymous if you're going to have an account you know and yeah you don't use it as a selling tactic in my opinion so not that there's there we're not getting any push back we're not getting anything it's just it just must I think that we need responsibly to say it especially as people who are in media it's not okay to dock someone that's super terrible and is completely unethical so we don't condone that in any way but what we are condoning is well hey if you're going to muse that if you're going to use that to make money then we're going to talk about it because you did that intentionally you better take the good with the bad because there are people that are boycotting this book because they think they're maybe from problematic authors or AI you know but I know some places any publicity is good publicity so you know it's a risk that they are willing to take so it seems so so yeah just to give a little bit more background so the publisher for Silver Elite um is Delray Publishing Random House Publishing Group so obviously really big huge publishing house um just to name a few of their other popular fantasy or dystopian or romance authors they have Robin Hobb they have Naomi Novik they have Pierce Brown um so they have some really big names in all of those categories that's just a few too i mean they've got tons of them um so just to give you guys a little bit of context with that it's not like some rinka dink publishing house who's just like trying to come up with some new tactic to sell books you know um and then also you know will it have sequels i would assume yes because of the cliffhanger but I wasn't able to find anything um to indicate like when that would occur yeah so no dates are out there as far as I could tell um you know it's not available to pre-order sequel there's no title i haven't seen a cover nothing like that and yeah where can you buy it so literally everywhere i did hear from some people that it was sold out when they tried to pick it up um I just read it on Kindle but I did a brief look um just before we were filming today it I mean it's a it's currently available in in stock on Amazon it's currently available in in stock at Target so it's not like it's you know sold out in a way that would make it really hard for people to get it or at least it's not right now but I did hear a couple people tried to get it and couldn't find it for a while yeah I posted about it like a little over a week ago and people were like "Oh my gosh where did you find it?" And I just said "Oh Kindle." But yeah it's out there even our boy Tyler shout out to Tyler over at XFanboy Reads X at Instagram he was just doing a cute little Barnes & Noble vlog and I saw stacks and stacks of Silver Elite in the background so maybe it was out of stock for a couple weeks but good news guys it's back if you want it it is back they ain't letting that be uh sold out for very long no and as far as I could tell also so it's available on Kindle it's available on audiobook it's available on hardback but there is no paperback yet or even like a pre-order for a paperback yet yeah sometimes those take a while and it didn't look like there was any special editions either it just it all looked like very It is from whatever that book of the month was i think for May it had like veins you or silver I don't know something silver elite a special like a special book box yeah but not like one you could readily pick up at like one of the big stores no yeah as far as I could see no same okay so there's a little bit of context for you guys we don't know a whole lot about it but this is what we do know okay so should we get into the conspiracy theories people are floating around yeah first of all tell me this guys why I felt so silly telling Liz this when she texted me should we read Silver Elite and I was just like I don't I can't explain it to this day having read it i still don't have answers but we were absolutely bombarded with pictures videos ads of this book in what early May end of April it happened very fast very fast crazy so hey the marketing team was on it that's for sure but something about I don't know if it's the cover design the way the labels are the font for crying out loud something gives me like a cringy ick that's not even the right word i don't know i just feel like from it i feel like you get the heebie-jebies from it i feel like that's the best way to put it yes that's the better word it's not cringey but a heebie-jebies something about it gives me the heebiejibbies i don't know if it's cuz it was like everywhere overnight or if it's some kind of weird talk about conspiracy theories triangular way your eye pattern looks but something about it does something to me that it's I'm I won't be buying a trophy that's for sure because the book gives me the heebiejibbies i don't know what that's so weird and I understand that but if you happen to feel the same way as me please let me know that I'm not alone cuz Liz is like I am not having that response i'm not well especially cuz I feel like the cover was just very like basic if if anything I feel like it was almost like underwhelming to me maybe that's what it is maybe it's the juxtaposition of the hype versus what we're given that I'm just like it's hurting my brain yeah cuz it pretty much just says Silver Elite and then has a dove on it right isn't that it some lightning some lightning and you know what the font it's almost papyrus maybe that's what it is it's like I really don't like there's certain fonts that are just not allowed in my house it's just you're just freaking Ryan Gosling in SNL having your papyrus meltdown it's me in a nutshell in a nutshell maybe that's what it is you just can't handle it like try harder yeah i don't know anyways okay so let's just speculate okay so the first conspiracy theory is that it actually Okay so call it a theory or whatever that it actually is true that this is a New York Times bestselling author just writing under a pin name do you have any thoughts on who it might be oh I got lots so if you do too we'll just go back and forth on our speculation obviously this is all speculation guys after before reading it after reading it okay so my first one would be is it Rebecca Yaros let's talk about that mhm well that was my first indication as well i feel like there was a lot of similarities in writing style i feel like there was a lot of blatant similarities in the story yeah like to the point where like I feel like if the options are is this Rebecca Yaros writing under a pin name to sell Fourth Wing again just like with a different outfit on or is this a different author basically I feel like recycling a lot of the same ideas from Fourth Wing but then just not putting the dragons in i don't know like I don't know which is worse you know yeah yeah cuz I mean Yeah i guess if I was a shady author I would do that too because I don't want to be accused of copying yeah which it's like we get it we have a lot of the same tropes ideas like all that kind of thing but it was just like from everything from like you know the powers being very similar to the signets to the silver silver elite silver hair like they didn't have silver hair but you know kind of that heavy on the silver even just the title silver elite fourth wing like literally they're talking about like the rank in the military that you're in i'm like is that just a common thing maybe a military romances i don't really think so i think that that's like and Daros is was in the military wasn't she was it just her husband or her too i think it was just her husband but I don't know maybe um well okay any other theories on how it could be Yaros cuz I want to rebuttal i mean like literally so many different plot points reminded me so much of it like when you know they killed Kane off obviously he didn't stay dead but I was like this gives Kane is Riddic let's be real right right exactly right okay also crosses Zayen but sucks i mean I didn't even particularly like Zaden so it's like so it's like you know to me Zayen was already like Teamu version of you know like I don't know Reand or whatever so then now we're going to go teamu teamu version like Violet and Ren both kind of insufferable guys yeah you know mhm totally people love Fourth Wing and Silver Elite unsubscribe i suck we liked the first fourth wing okay it all went downhill from there yeah but we give Fourth Wing the credit that it's due it was good it just it's it went to bad do I want to read it again without dragons no the dragons were my favorite part so I'm going to be mad i mean even everything down to like the torture scene reminded me so it was actually guys it was kind of hilarious cuz it's been a long time since I've read Fourth Wing right so we're reading this like torture scene in Silver Elite where basically as part of their training you know they have to go through um you know like what is it called like interrogation training okay and so I read about it and I like close the book for a second to like go get a Diet Coke or something and I'm like this really reminds me of something i was like what is it i'm like Iron Flame yeah exactly i was like this is the it's the same it's reminding me of the Imperion again and I didn't even realize it you know what I mean and so it's just there was a lot of similarities in my opinion yeah so I don't know so what's your rebuttal to that my rebuttal would be like I I wouldn't be surprised if that came out that it was her so my rebuttal is only to play devil's advocate here is just like so with that said on the other hand it would be so bizarre for a pub a publishing house I think to not want to ride the coattales of that author's recent success right of Rebecca's success however the other devil in the room with us is going to say but she still pumps out romance novels that don't get any traction you know maybe they do in the romance community So I don't want to say any but like at large as much as Silver Elite and Fourth Wink has done yeah totally so it might behoove her to dip her toes in there you know and without still publishing her romance under the same Rebecca Yaros name and doing a different name well and what's better than one franchise that makes millions of dollars two franchises that make millions of dollars and if she came out with it as that people would be like "This is literally fourth wing though." Yeah well and it's like I'm pretty sure like we'll do this in the future when we go down the you know uh unpopular books by popular authors but I think that she has written other military romances just in the contemporary genre yeah i mean maybe we'll have more answers when we read that one guys so definitely subscribe cuz we'll be doing that in the fall it's like literally same i can't get out of this place okay so that is crazy also but one more devil's advocate and I don't even know which devil it is anymore okay Red Tower does some really shady stuff and that's Rebecca Yarus's publishing house so not hers but the one that she's under but it's a different publishing house but who's to say she doesn't take something i don't know who's to say that's not another branch of them like they have their freaking hands and everything like octopus yeah well you want to go farther down the conspiracy the conspiracy i meant to say rabbit hole but hey okay well here you go if you want to have your mind even more like what is going on right now okay so Silver Elite was published on May 6th of 2025 okay okay so Red Tower published another book okay so published a book called Shield of Sparrows by Devie Perry red Tower did on 5625 that people have been saying is extremely similar to Silver Elite oh that's the one that everybody's trying to like say "Read this instead why is everybody talking about Silver Elite?" Came out on the same day and Red Tower published it well crap we're going to have to read that one too i'm reading all of these against my wheel guys like I have so many other That's the frustrating part I think after reading this is there's so many other good books that I could be reading sorry i I know people there are people that love it so I'm not trying to like say anything about you guys everybody can like what they like but we clearly don't well yeah so I thought that was really interesting too cuz I was seeing Shield of Sparrows floating around everywhere and I've been seeing tons of people talking about how similar it is to Silver Elite and I was like hm I wonder when that came out and I was like oh it came out on the same day see that i'm getting that heeie-jeebie feeling again like it makes me kind of sick but it's all speculation so I don't know mean nothing it might literally mean nothing okay do you have any more um theories on who Yeah I do but if you have one go ahead okay so this is just a crazy wingnut theory that has absolutely no substantiation in reality whatsoever but it's just vibes it's just vibes and like a feeling I have okay so from time to time when I was reading this I felt like the spice was pretty cumbersome and didn't feel very organic to me and was like the best way I could describe it as cringey but it wasn't even really cringey it was just kind of like okay like I don't know very like robotic I guess would be a good way to describe it it was robotic yes yes it was very like um someone told you what a spicy scene should sound like so then like you pulled out the thesaurus and tried to replicate it that's how it felt um and so my wingnut theory is that it was actually a male author so like an author that identifies as a male writing under a pseudonym to be accepted by the romantic community and so I h I don't know who that might be but that's it yeah I could see that yeah it gives I could see that it gives those vibes i don't know for some reason Cross just does not strike me as a you know as we say in the community a man written by a woman he didn't seem like that to me yeah and we'll talk I got some stuff to say about least favorite most favorite characters with that guy but yes when you say when you all of the men including cross to me feel like what men think women like mhm exactly exactly so Mhm and then same thing with the women they are all very catty to each other and superficial and I didn't like anybody so yeah yeah and like with Lyd coming in during that like final act and just completely betraying her I was like I don't know i don't know it just seems fishy none of none of the relationships were that like uh indepth like even the best friend that she communicates with I don't know she disappears all the time i even the relationship with Wolf it just seemed superficial to me yeah so agree either it's a writing problem or it's a man yeah i love that it's like writing problem or man you know what which one is it which one is it um Yeah and it's like you know obviously we don't want to generalize over here and be like men write this way and women write this way cuz that's obviously really problematic but it just doesn't like I said it doesn't read like a MMC written by a woman like it just it does it didn't feel that way yeah yeah mhm all right my next one it would be let's say generally speaking it's an author that has been deemed problematic slashcancled so is it a JK Rowling you know or any of the other slew of people it is possible sure because JK Rowling herself has published under a different pen name robert Galbreth is one and seeing how fantasy romance dystopian specifically as genres right now are so popular I could see that happening writing style I can only compare it obviously to Harry Potter so I don't feel that it's that way at all no but I don't know you know it could be any anybody like that because why else if you're that big of a best-selling author i mean we've listed a lot of reasons right now why they might do that but being problematic or canceled could be one of them so absolutely yep do you have any others no do you all right i got one more this is my unhinged guess but if I am right about this y'all owe me one crow okay a murder of crows get sent to my house no okay erica Michelle aka Eel James hear me out hear me out imagine imagine fanfic for Hunger Games baby goes off the rails and leaves the plot okay because specifically this is the really the only reason why I felt this way is because several times we have a mention of long fingers we did we absolutely did i even noted that too so hey maybe she wants to come back that would make sense because she's already written under an effort pen name before it did kind of feel like her writing style at times but like maybe with different characters so MMC that I don't really like hello Christian Gray you know immature people anything is possible anything can happen so true oh my gosh i did notice the long fingers thing though for sure i do think we should briefly talk about the possibility or not of is it Sarah J mass no no you don't want to know why okay obviously we love her around here but we will critique her too as well but this lady got us recently to thoroughly enjoy and fivestar a 350 page Catwoman story so if she could do that she would have done a lot more with this that world building and character development are not her level whatsoever there's no way there's no way there's just no way unless Unless she was like "I'm tired i just want to write something real quick that's like kind of okay." And they were like "Sure all right." And this is what she came up with and then if it is her you guys we would never know she would never admit to it no it's never coming out but but because of the fact that she did have that Catwoman book that gained way less popularity than any of her other books didn't try to hide that she was the one that wrote that i feel like this could not be her yeah no I think she has her hands full too with all the because she better now if she didn't after seeing all of our conspiracies she's does now she's like "A crap got to tie all those eggs." Yeah yikes i didn't mean any of it uh I know right i was just making it up as I went yeah okay so all right so we've covered the is this just a pen name for a popular author theory okay so the second theory that's been floating around is that this actually isn't written by a person at all but it's just written as an AI experiment to see if we'll all fall for it which I could 100% see as a possibility especially now when you're talking about that is it called Shield and Sparrows yeah red Tower book that was released on the same day then that really feels like this is a publishing house experiment that they're putting on the masses to see what they can get away with and maybe what if that's why I feel this way your weird feeling it is it's kind of like if I tell chat GBT here here's some books because we know right now that that is happening in the publishing world they are taking author's books published or not wherever they can get their hands on it and trying to come out with books so maybe they feel like they finally perfected it it's going to happen if not now it will at some point yeah for sure and it reads like AI wrote it in my opinion and the cover looks like it was AI with the [ __ ] papyrus it look it looks very it looks and reads very contrived to me and very basic and very like surface level and so for all those reasons it would make sense if this was an AI experiment 100% and then we're just going to market the crap out of it and see if we can because a person can't yeah and just see if we could get it to sell as many copies as a popular release from a popular author would sell and if that's the case then it's just going to keep on happening and I mean that's horrible and it's like you know if that's true then obviously a lot of us are guilty of buying it you know what I mean so hey can I ask GPT hey was this Yeah my my buddy Chad GPI made it um oh my god has anybody asked Has anybody asked Chad GPT they sell out themselves oh my god i I really truly hope that's not the case but it's going to come down the pipeline eventually and this has all the markers for it cuz if I was a computer and this is what I was handed hey put in dystopian put in fantasy put in these things this is kind of what I'd come up with too you know as a computer as a computer you know yeah no totally it's just like an amalgamation of like all these popular tropes where nothing seems really fully fleshed out in my opinion okay so I feel bad sure if this is like a real person that's not problematic that maybe we haven't read their stuff or maybe we have and we liked it and this and this ended up being them and it well then at the end of the day we just didn't like it we didn't know who wrote it we have all these things and questions we're asking ourselves throughout reading it but at the end of the day it just wasn't for us so you know yeah no matter who wrote it no matter who wrote it yeah and if it says JM I We're disappointed in you we're disappointed in you yeah truly tr it's uh freaking Tolken back from the dead we Lord of the Rings to this so disappointed the reason why it sounds a little bit like forced is because it's literally just Tolken's ghost writing it rip okay um so then the third conspiracy theory we've got that's been floating around is is this right-wing propaganda i didn't feel that way i went into and I think that that speaks volumes because I went into it specifically looking for it right like I'm like "Okay cuz we had a list of these before we started reading it that's what inspired us to read it right?" And so if I'm sitting there specifically picking it apart through this lens of is this intentionally right-wing propaganda to kind of infiltrate the masses and I still didn't feel like it particularly fit that mold I think that's probably a good sign yeah and I think that also goes back to the writing quality is that you don't really fully know where anybody stands it's all kind of a mess everybody's kind of like all over the place with where they lie however I do have a couple quotes that did stick out to me is hm oh interesting both from Cross who I did not like spoiler for my least favorite person i will say that i mean it's definitely promilitary so take from that what you will but I don't necessarily know that I would consider that to be right-wing propaganda by any means um but it's definitely very pro-military in a lot of ways um I definitely wrote down a couple quotes too that kind of leaned more that way but I wasn't getting I don't know it didn't seem like creepy or shady to me in that way if that makes sense yeah like I wasn't like I think maybe just because it's military is how people are gaining that perspective yeah but I feel like you know to me that would be like too vast of a generalization cuz then I I would go into any military romance thinking that it's right-wing propaganda that doesn't really seem fair yeah yeah you know yeah um but yeah I mean they definitely made a couple comments like I remember I highlighted something where you know they talked about how like specifically overpopulation was the demise of like modern society and I was like oh so it didn't have anything to do with like an uneven distribution of resources perhaps or like environmental degradation caused by that okay um but that's I don't know so take with that you know what you will it could mean a lot or it could mean nothing at the same time you know what I mean yeah well the quotes that I wrote down so Cross is discussing the prison industrial complex and he says "Before the last war there were penalties all over the world." Sorry there were penitentiies all over the world as a society we housed millions of criminals clothed them and fed them cold-blooded killers and child rapists living better lives than most free people even the ones who were sentenced to death were allowed to live for decades past their sentences they ate three square meals a day while those who hadn't killed or raped anyone could barely afford to eat evil pilfering rare resources from innocent citizens and not discussing at all like how they got to that point you know well I mean that's also that's basically I feel like his speech was alluding to the fact that he's just very pro death penalty like he's very pro um what's like the word that I'm execution right that's like but he isn't because he moves people to right labor camps yes so that's why I'm saying like I don't know that could be like an ideology that he's been fed his whole life as being the son of like the military commander of the coup literally and he might be having some dissonance around those But yes for sure i Well I think it the reason why it rags red flags to people is because we don't get a clear conscience on Ren you know and she seems to be kind of forgetting about all her issues because of this hot guy so I know I'm watering it down but that's kind of the inner monologue well he's so hot though i think that is like a quote in there and then also so education this one really irked me because specifically education right now in times such as these is at the forefront of discussion and unfortunately programs are being constantly defunded so Cross says the general is obsessed with creating the mistakes of the old era that's all my brothers and I ever heard growing up so just like you said he might be trying to deconstruct you know they're only 20 and 22 so hey they're like fresh out of the house so he's talking about how humanity destroyed itself letting chaos reign encouraging learned helplessness this is the part that irked me okay kids were in school until their 20s adults too all these pathetic a-holes wasting time and wasting resources if you're not productive you're destructive and she she says "Is that what you believe efficiency and order above all?" and he says "I believe that humanity is wired for destruction no matter the environment old era new era a barren I don't know how to say that word on top prime on top we will always find a way to destroy ourselves we are doomed species." It kind of went off a different tangent like he's kind of talking about education so I felt like I don't know the way this reads it's like it's just like in there a little bit like it's just education's bad okay but anyways yeah like a little sneaky but then they're not talking about the issues of military and causing mass destruction around the world and sending people to labor camps and cutting killing half the species yeah well and I think that I mean like cuz literally we're coming off of and still going on like a huge genocide right and we know that they're doing medical exper experiments on people um with special abilities or maybe not even with special abilities maybe just on people in general um yeah so I think the issue with this book and the reason why there's the theory that this is written as rightwing wing propaganda is because I think it brings up a lot of important as dystopian books should it brings up a lot of important topics right like as you say like the military industrial complex the labor camps you know the environmental degradation um etc you know political obviously political structures a coup but it doesn't actually give any type of like deeper Mhm like analyzing of those topics or like give you an overall tone or sense of where the characters really stand on those things and I think that's what could make it problematic it's like it's it feels like it's playing both sides and that is that's a side you know what I mean i think that's the bottom line i think that's what it is i mean that brings us into you know our fourth theory um is it adult Hunger Games like I would say absolutely not no I could see where people could pull some little ideas here and there like this could be Eel James fanfic for Hunger Games where it goes off the rails because it starts as that you know small town and they you know have the she tries to stop the assassination or not assassination but execution of Uncle Jim and the names were all over no Uncle Jim i was like I can't with this um her name being she named herself after a bird you know Katniss flowers and obviously birds with the newer books um so I could see some little things but yeah that's kind of where it ends yeah you know I guess maybe if Gail was inside the if Katniss went to the military instead and Gail was there then okay you know cuz he is kind of like a Gail on the military side kind of but at the same time like Well yeah because they've been friends technically their whole lives since she was like eight or something right because they've been talking it um through telepathy or whatever you want to call it um so you know that is a similarity as far as like lifelong friends and then he ends up in the military she doesn't really have there isn't a love triangle going on though yeah well hey here's this for advertising i don't like when a publishing house or authors try to sell their books themselves by comparing it to other books so now New York Times bestseller pen name just like Hunger Games and Katniss for adults it's like well you don't need that because Hunger Games is for adults and any age group can gleam different information and insight into a dystopian world from these books so it's a complete disservice and it belittles Hunger Games I think by selling it that way because all that's telling me is well this is going to have smut in it so I guess that's good to know but I don't know you know what I mean yeah i didn't like I would not read this even if I hadn't heard anything about that i would never read this and then describe this book as like oh it was like Hunger Games that would never even like cross my mind like what would cross my mind is oh this was really similar to Fourth Wing like that's like just without the dragons like literally I would never think to compare it to Hunger Games because I feel like Yeah just the political theorizing and was so much more well thought out in Hunger Games yeah yeah like you can't it's not like maybe it tried i guess I mean let's talk about dystopian honestly I don't even feel like it's that dystopian it just threw in a different It's a little more and you might say that's the same thing but it's more post-apocalyptic to me and rebuilding like that cuz there's a devastation that happens i know they kind of tow the line of similarities but dystopian to me talks a lot more about political unrest where this did but again it just touches on it post-apocalyptic is kind of like uh you know that scramble for society and refiguring some stuff out so and there's a lot of devastation and stuff so I don't know those like post-apocalyptic movies and books are kind of more that more surface level when it comes to political Yeah totally things so like even The Last of Us for instance you know there's political unrest going on but like it's not really the story yeah exactly i feel like if you were to call this a dystopic like a truly dystopic novel then I feel like it would have to examine the political structure much more thoroughly so that like I said even if we're not really clear on who the bad guys and who the good guys are we can formulate our own opinions because we understand enough about the world and like the politics happening and we don't we can't even do that it's like too surface we don't even know yeah we can't even tell you if it's rightwing or leftwing know where what political spectrum it's on cuz try to fit too much in so I agree all right well we're an hour into it so should we get into our personal thoughts in case they weren't clear yet okay so what were three tropes you loved well I'll give them something okay i like telepathy and is that the right word telepathy there we go telepathy yeah telepathy and inciting um and guess what it did it took a tropes that I usually love and somehow ruined it so that's all I'm going to say okay what about you i mean three tropes that I loved doesn't necessarily mean that I loved them in this book but it was just for people wondering it wasn't enemies to lovers so there's that i do enjoy a good secret identity so I did like a good like um double agent moment you know mhm and then I also put quote unquote dystopia so if that's your thing and you just I don't know if you just want like light dystopia yeah yeah light mode light mode yeah um Okay so then what about the trope you hated a training academy/military sorry that's exactly what I put it's not for us no yeah it's just it's academia but like make it make it military and I don't know that's like combining two things that I don't know that I need to read about to enjoy we We've determined that we do love a pair of good tactical pants over here in these parts yeah sure but that's where it begins and ends yeah yep for sure so what about a niche micro micro trope that stood out to you so it could be good or bad uh Cross was really randy in all the wrong ways i noticed like I noticed that he um once he was like a little comfortable once they hooked up a couple times that's all he would lead with every time that's where it kind of goes back to like written by a man maybe because it wasn't even hey how was your day it's get into my room so I do people like that like I get it but because he they had such little character development between them as a couple and separately I didn't believe it it wasn't believable so and I didn't like it he made made me icky to him it made him icky he made he made him more like frat boy type which vibes he's literally 22 so um that tracks for sure i think that like the whole like pushy like Yeah pushy like stop talking just let's do it all the time like vibe i do like that vibe in the right context in the right context but it was not it was like very weird and out of place and just seemed kind of like okay i don't know yeah it seemed very surface level again and wasn't believable but there's definitely been plenty of romance books where that's kind of like the MMC's vibe and I'm fine with it because it fits with the character and like flows you know yeah yeah so I put a niche micro trope that I like is powers developed from nuclear fallout i just find that to be really interesting that's one of the things that I like about the Fallout show that we were talking about earlier yeah it's just kind of fascinating to think about you know like it's like the whole Chernobyl phenomenon you know what I mean like what can happen like when something like that happens to nature yeah it had it had some good bones in there but I think the moral of the story is it wasn't fleshed out enough we need a different word but still I mean that's the bottom line so okay we've pretty much already um asked ourselves this question answered it I think but just if you have anything more to say about it so obviously it's popular i feel like a lot of that popularity was um created by the marketing and PR team obviously I don't know that it's necessarily popular because the fandom is so huge it's only been out for less than a month so it's hard to say do you think that it deserves a popularity that it it's gotten in this short time compared to other authors and published books nope yeah same same yeah i mean time will tell right with sequels and if the fandom stays strong as it goes along or if it fizzles out you know yeah and people are allowed to like it i'm not saying anything like that but it is popular it cannot be denied is because there was a huge PR and marketing push yeah huge not that it doesn't have legs on its own but that's when you find out right how substantial is it you know yeah does it have longevity is it going to build on the story and become better is it going to fizzle out yeah i said it was just fine so it didn't suck me into the fandom and make me like a diehard fan for any by any means yeah so what was your favorite part if you had to choose a favorite part the inciting scenes were interesting to me i like that and then I loved the black lands but I wish we got to know more about like kind of like each thing i wish it was like okay but tell us more like build that up more please mhm so well because it's like all we know about the Blacklands is that she lived there for 5 years no one really lives in there there's all these creatures and that light refle refracts differently so that it's dark like 99% of the time but why like something with the fallout yeah yeah mhm but I want I want more like that would be really interesting yeah it's a good idea um I put my favorite parts were Litty turning her in because I didn't see that i like a good twist you know i didn't see that coming i didn't think that she'd do it i thought that she would stay loyal i liked finding out that Cross was wolf because I'm a dummy and didn't see that coming hey was that okay because this is the only time we really texted each other about it but so you were finishing it last night i had already finished it was that the Was that the twist you were talking about okay that's what I thought at first but then you started like talking about Lydia and then like the other things happened and I was like "Whoa whoa I got to hide because I forgot there were several twists at the end." Yeah yeah yeah but I personally kind of Yeah i kind of saw them all coming except Lydia but to me I didn't even care so I just I more so just gasped and was like "Oh my god what a crappy friend." Like I just got um It just shows though you know i mean it shows how deep the prejudice goes like being raised in a society like that you know so I think that it was important that she turned on her and that's why it was one of my favorite parts so Lyd turning on her finding out Cross's wolf i also liked finding out about Cross's mom because I feel like that added an element like a different layer of character development that um up until that point we really were lacking yes mhm yeah mhm so I did appreciate I did enjoy that it did humanize him more so for sure well it humanized him more but it also just showed that you know yeah things aren't black and white at all like is his mom schizophrenic or is you know is she modified like we don't modified or did she have her brain jumbled up just like her dad just did his dad so those are things those little moments are what makes me say "Hey if they have a second book come out we can confirm it's not AI and the fandom reads it and loves it and thinks that it's worth it if you were like us and kind of felt like it was surface level then I would give it a chance." Cuz this is the opposite of the fourth wing situation where fourth wing it's kind of like I don't know if I could keep going because it went it was up high and then it came down low it can get better from a three star totally can especially because it's only what 400 pages yeah it was like 500 yeah it wasn't too crazy it definitely has some potential if they iron them out but then I feel like if you you have this much popularity and the majority seems to be enjoying it what do you need to change you know yeah so what about your least favorite part oh anything with Ren and Cross together the whole thing the whole book i didn't like them and so that's why I think when she was talking to Wolf one of the nights I was like "Oh Cross is Wolf." So and it's not that it's not that it's bad when you can guess it it just made one of the only major plot twists a bummer for me cuz I was like "Okay." Yeah see I didn't see it coming so it's different for everybody i feel like sometimes the plot twists like I was telling Ashley the plot twists I don't see coming are obviously or are always the very obvious ones i think because it's like my brain almost like ignores it because I'm like obviously that wouldn't happen so why do I need to pay attention to that and I'm like oh my god it happened you know yeah well they are so different from what we know too so I can see the disconnect um I did not see Kane actually working for the resistance or whatever they're called the rebels so I'm glad he's alive cool but I was just like okay fake out death great you know yeah I definitely uh Kane dying because he was um like in my opinion the only good character i was like I'm like they're going to kill off the one good character so then when he came back I was like sweet cuz in that context where you're playing a double agent it actually makes sense that you would fake your death and come back like it's not just like a fake out death you know it's different in my opinion um and then I and then I put for my other least favorite part the hospital with all the experiments but that was least favorite because it's just terrible like it was supposed to be bad you know yeah for sure yeah so then who was your favorite character kane obviously yeah same same it's the only one I liked so Mhm me too yeah good old Riddic 2.0 riddic 2.0 100 million% that's it yep who's your least favorite character litty that backstabbing you know what yeah yeah but to me that's a survival instinct almost yeah cuz they only knew each other for a couple months maybe so like I could see that happening yeah you know I just I didn't like Cross he gave me the yick yeah he gave me the So did Zayen though zayen gave me the X too i you know I he didn't give me the ick enough to win my least favorite character but he did definitely like like I said he's just he's he's no book boyfriend material that's for sure okay so yeah I do have um that quote from earlier i did find it the general claims that prior to the last war overpopulation was a serious problem we wouldn't have gotten to that dire point to global conflict to seven continents devastated four of them raised or underwater if it weren't for all of the people battling over dwindling resources so to me what that says is okay battling over dwindling resources why were there dwindling resources you know what I mean it's just a very very surface level like not in-depth enough analysis of like why we would be in that position yeah although Ren does go on to say that the sad part is that the coup wouldn't have been successful if there weren't hordes of people who already agreed with the general so obviously it's not like he just had these ideas and then just came to power on his own there were a lot of people supporting his theories for sure so yeah that was the quote that I was talking about earlier do you have any other quotes that you wanted to bring up nothing else that I haven't already said how was the spice i just put cringe cringe and robotic is how I felt yeah it was just meh cuz I didn't like them together so yeah yeah it felt very like forced okay so then here's the big question so when the sequel comes out because we're assuming there will be one even though it hasn't been officially announced yet will you read it hm right now it's a no but I'll let it marinate and I'll talk to some people that read it and feel the same way that we do with the first one and see if they could change my mind you know I'll read it if I'll read it if you guys want us to for the podcast otherwise it's out of my brain yeah i got to get I got to go to some other books that are good yeah yeah if we get there in a year or whatever and you guys are like "No we need the followup then we'll do what we need to do." Yeah but for the team we'll take one for the team but as it is like on my own no i would absolutely not read the next one on my own no way unanswered questions do you have anything that you're confused about other than like all of the things that just didn't get answered in general yeah i mean I don't really care so none that I care about what about you um okay so I did want to discuss the ending because I found that to be really confusing so like what am I missing she gets this letter from Uncle Joe jim uncle Jim sorry I have an Uncle Joe okay uncle Jim and he basically says that her parents he tells her who her parents are tells her what her real name is but then explains that her parents weren't really um heroes in the rebellion they were like defectors from the rebellion like that's kind of how I read it yeah it was kind of weird it was weird so I was like I feel like if anything I would just need more information about that like what does that even mean like were they military double agents who then like basically ended up screwing over both sides so that they ended up being disliked by both sides like that's kind of how I read it you know what I mean i'm like is that right i don't know yeah or maybe because they saw the evil for both sides so yeah I don't know yeah yeah it was a little bit ambiguous yeah yeah which the whole book was so at least it's consistently ambiguous yeah that was my only issue um or only like unanswered question and then did you read the audio book at all or did you just read the Kindle i just did the Kindle me too but there is an audio book so if you guys are interested in that it does exist um but I did not listen to any of it so I cannot speak to if it were good or not okay so on Goodreads Silver Elite has 26,000 about 26,000 ratings which for only being out for less than a month is kind of a lot like just to kind of put that into perspective that's more ratings I'm pretty sure than Catwoman has still and that's by SJM that's crazy it's been out for like eight years uh it gets an average of a 4.09 so it's kind of like That's not great because not terrible we talk about a lot of reviews here and usually books that everybody loves are going to be like I would say 4.3 or higher you know which starts coming down once you get closer to the four a solid four and then you're in the 3.98 watch out so I pulled a couple negative and positive reviews so just from good readads robin rated it one star and says "Is the dystopia in the room with us right now?" Well if you're looking for a book that prides itself in being a dystopian novel while not interrogating any part of living under a totalitarian regime its propaganda and systemic violence then welcome this book does not care about dissecting anything with this dystopian society simply a sexy backdrop for our two characters who experience violence on a semi-regular basis to themselves and to those they care about but are more than happy to forget all of that when it comes to their forbidden love so many parts of this just made me feel so gross see the scene with Tana what followed and how quickly it was brushed aside and never touched upon again that's the whole review we didn't talk about that yeah um and but yeah I completely agree that terrible and it was very like brushed under the rug for sure and I think that goes back to the issues that we're kind of having with it being surface level is it keeps introducing these ideas that need to be talked about and flushed out and they're not doing it so that's leaving some of us like icky like sexualized violence from people in the military or people in authority for example yeah it's like it's almost there right it's almost there where it's bringing up that topic and then it just goes nowhere yeah i was like "Oh well I killed him and then he covered up for me anyways move on." It's like well that if you're going to go there you need to go there or else you're doing it a disservice you know it's kind of what Eel James did in Fifty Shades of Gray yes totally so you guys owe me a lot of crows if it's her yep so Leaken on Goodreads rates it one star this is not a return to the Hunger Games as an adult that would require some coherent exploration of the genre it claims yeah yeah yeah i agree reasons for a one star ren our FMC is a horribly unlikable person and then the romance is the worst couple you know but then this is the reason why I pulled this review cinder blocks and exposed pipes do not a dystopia make silver Elite does the same thing I take issue with in many recent romanticity hits the potentially interesting dystopian and sci-fi elements are an afterthought they're only developed and utilized in so far as is necessary to put the FMC and love interest into tropy scenarios in the vein of playing Barbies as a kid and trying to make the Barbies kiss i was truly intrigued by the promise of a dystopian world with an oppressive regime and an FMC with hidden abilities infiltrating the regime's elite military squad however the author was clearly not interested in the political commentary that is inherent to the genre for example Ren notes that the company is a quote unquote military machine but its leader the general quote has no need for politics or superfluous superfluous job titles this is just a bunch of handwaving to avoid the inherent politics of the world partly because I think if the politics were explored at all it would be clearer that this is an unintentional villain origin story and I thought that was interesting yep so people seem to have similar issues with it as what we have with it at the end of the day yeah um so the five stars we'll end on a good note um five stars from Emma she says"Diverent meets Fourth Wing without the dragons and the FMC is not a weakling she's an absolute badass who has to pretend she's not so so that her enemies don't suspect her while she's trading with them to become one of their elites did I mention her super hot captain is the son of the enemy general literally everything your dystopian heart has been craving since the 2010s but with better spice." Yeah I don't agree but hey good for you so Naz she gives it five stars okay what to say what to say other than this book was one of the best dystopian reads I've had in a long time dare I say it's officially my top read of 2025 i loved everything about it the characters the plot the pacing and obviously the dystopian vibes i lost sleep over this book and regret nothing and then she kind of goes on and on to explain um but you know I think it's just maybe how what you expect out of your sci-fi what you expect out of your dystopian stories and if you you know I mean want it to explore politics because that's kind of the point of dystopia I feel yeah yeah agreed or if you just want a post-apocalyptic story which I think that there is a differentiation there you know yeah and I just feel like this book is more heavy on the romance even though I don't like this romance story and they didn't lead with that at all like I knew there was romance involved but you know selling it as heavily dystopian and stuff like that it's like well no surface level very surface level and so so on that note do you have any last words to say about Silver Elite before we close this chapter until maybe when the next one comes out possibly no I've said enough I've had enough so should we wrap this up with a Smasher Pass let's do it smasher Pass let's go unhinged do you have one for me i do i tried to pick a dystopian one um but I feel like we've done a lot of them already so this is the best I could come up with maybe not so much for you cuz I think I know what your answer is going to be but for the people all right so space dystopia Dune okay uh Timothy Shalamé pass in every like world oh me too every genre he's He's too young yeah he's I think he's in his 20 like 25 yeah yeah he's too small just a little guy sorry but people love him though the ladies love him yeah the people love him people love him that's good for you zaya loves him right no is it Kim Kim Kardashian's sister uh Jenna i have literally no idea someone loves him someone's out there for him good for you guys no I think Zandaya is married to Spider-Man remember oh yeah another little dude he's He's little too yeah oh hey Spider-Man smash or pass there you go wait which one uh any of them any of them uh well I'll just rank them because So what's his name andrew Garfield is that his name he's the worst so he's at the bottom for me i know people love him but like he gives me the X like nobody's business um and then what's his name the one that came out like when we were in high school toby Maguire toby Maguire so he's he would be the next bad so um so he gives me the X also and then the most recent Spider-Man would be the best option I feel but he is not my favorite either so Spider-Man's are kind of low on the totem pool as far as uh as far as superheroes go but I will say what's his name i'm like blanking on it the new Spider-Man i don't know dude spider-man all around is a pass I think we can say oh what's his name tom Holland yeah he definitely in my opinion plays the best Spider-Man and he's the most smashable but even then very low on the Smash list but then it just goes down from there so it's Yeah toby Magguire and then Andrew Garfield so what about you what's your ranking system so that's three of them there's three Spider-Mans at this point yeah I mean there's probably more but those are like the famous ones um all of them are number three except for the meme that they all point to each other that's a number one favorite number three I did the reverse order as you so all of them are pass they're all at the bottom of the list except for the Spider-Man meme love that meme love that meme oh my god I love it i'm curious to see who you guys pick as your favorite Spider-Man yeah something for everybody i feel like most people would pick Tom Holland just because he seems like such a cool guy yeah he seems chill after I saw him do that performance you know of Rihanna's song or whatever on like the lipsync battle I was like he seems cool yeah yeah it's cool cool all right guys silver Elite what a time our first conspiracy theory episode did you like this should we do more of these let us know yeah i hope we didn't hurt anybody's feelings if you guys liked it we're proud of you we're happy for you quite frankly we want to be in fandoms we love the fandoms we do but sometimes the fandoms doesn't work out yeah so hey I feel like the wind are taken out of my sales here oh you guys thank you so much for joining us today and listening to kind of our unhinged thoughts and rambles we had some stuff to say so if you stuck around thank you so much make sure to like follow and subscribe anywhere you like to listen to your favorite podcasts including YouTube and also over on Instagram Tik Tok we're at Besties in the Books podcast everywhere and you can also check us out on Fable the spoiler-free book reading app book club buddy read all those things where we're reading books you can check us out there at besties in the book club but you guys we'll see you next Tuesday bye bye[Music]