☆☆☆☆☆
(0 stars)
Silence (Hush, Hush #3) by Becca Fitzpatrick.
It’s been two years since I read Crescendo, book two of the Hush, Hush quartet. I’ve gotten through a lot of YA para-ro angel books, it’s kinda my special topic. But Hush Hush is notably the worst. The notion I’ve vaguely seen of it having a resurgence is mind boggling. It’s always been one of the most boring, irritating, hateful, drivel-driving books from the time and holy crow why did I read book three.
Here’s the thing about Silence: it is nothing. It’s over 400 pages, and for about half of that, the main character has amnesia and has forgotten the first two books. The writing is repetitive, the eating-disorder jokes and slut-shaming continues, the love interest is still a creep, and half the action is resolved off screen.
It’s the same as before, such a slump that would have been better suited to being a quarter of a book, even a few chapters. Silence is a pointless endeavour in the Twilight-led compulsion to have a quartet; it is heartless and charmless.
There’s not even any funny jokes to be made really.
Except the sudden bear shapeshifting.
Plot
How had I, a straightlaced, straight-A student, ever crossed paths with him? What could we possibly have in common? He was abominable… and the most alluring, tortured soul I’d ever met.
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Nora, a Regular Teen Girl, ended last book kidnapped by her Nephilim blood dad Hank, who wants to use her to emotionally torture her stalker boyfriend Patch, the fallen angel/returned Archangel/fallen again angel. Nephilhim and Fallen Angels dislike each other as Fallen Angels force Nephil into deals where they steal their bodies once every Jewish year during Cheshvan. Patch and Hank come to a deal where Patch will spy on fallen angels for Hank, and Hank will keep Nora safe. Hank is the villain though, so he keeps Nora in the woods for several months in an isolated cabin. Patch removes all her memories of this kidnapping and of him to keep her ‘safe’.
Word soup there. This stuff is all revealed via prologue, basically. We already know Hank from last book, he’s “The Black Hand”, a Nephil who wants to free his kind from Fallen Angel tyranny and is gathering a millitia. I’ve pointed out before that he’s on the right side here: the fallen angels are obviously the bad guys. Fallen angels can manifest on Earth fine, but can’t feel sensation such as touch and hunger. They beat nephil and force them from the age of 16 to act as vessals solely so they can feel physical things. Not really said is the obvious implication of how life-ruining this is. Some dickhead who resents you for being a ‘half-breed’ steals your body every year to spend your money, eat whatever, and probably have lots of sex without any care for your life. Despite the obvious badness, Patch is our bad boy hero who only swore off doing this stuff because he loves Nora, and he still hates Nephil. This book introduces some idea that Nephil are the oppressed ones, but with ‘always-right’ Patch around, the perspective still mostly falls on the Nephils being the scary bad guys.
Off track- don’t worry, there’s not much else to cover. Nora bumbles around with her amnesia, having dreams and visions she still doesn’t even try to piece together. She literally stumbles into the ‘plot’ by bumping into a bunch of fallen angels robbing a 7-11 and trying to force a nephil to swear an oath. Luckily ‘Jev’ shows up to save her. Jev is Patch. Even when Nora learns about Patch and her relationship with him, she can’t put it together Jev is Patch until he tells her. Even when she’s busy being extremely into him and feeling compelled by this asshat she met a day ago. Nora is described by herself, other characters, and the wiki as smart, and she is in fact the stupidest YA protagonist I’ve ever seen.
Some nonsense happens. Hank is dating Nora’s mother, and even though she has no memory Hank is evil, Nora throws a series of hissy-fits about this. Old childhood friend/nephilhim/boy partially responsible for her dad’s death Scott shows up to actually explain all the lore of the last two books. He exists in this neboulous spot as “semi love interest who will obviously never be final”, a subgenre of boy that is extremely common in books like this. He explains Hank is evil, so they break into a warehouse to try and find information. They don’t, and Patch/Jev shows up to save Nora and be mysterious. Like he’s done for the last two books. This time he winds up fessing up to being Patch.
Hank purposefully gets Nora and him into a car crash. A week later Nora goes to a concert, sees a nephil, and is attacked until Patch shows up to save her. While at his place, Scott calls Nora needing help. He’s a nephil and needs to skip town since he’s not part of Hank’s army. Nora goes to help him but gets attacked. Weirdly Patch doesn’t save her this time, but that’s because he’s busy having the climax of the book off screen.
Hank abducts Nora and confesses the shocking truth!: he got her in that car crash on purpose so she’d need a blood transfusion of his own blood. She’s a second-gen nephilhim being his bio daughter, and he wants her to have the blood of a first gen. Being a full nephilim makes her more powerful and immortal. Now, Hank hates Nora, and Nora hates Hank. But Hank has done this because a prophecy and a magic item told him he’d die soon despite being immortal, and also told him Nora was going to lead his nephil army. Despite her not wanting to, and him not wanting her to, he thinks that since he saw it in a vision he has no choice, and forces her to say a vow to take over the army and become a full nephilhim.
Nora gets to leave, and she goes to Patch’s place. Patch shows up and explains while she was missing, he went and solved the semi subplot (some archangel in a cage), got the archangels in Heaven to unanimously vote to make Hank mortal, AND apprehended Hank! Hank’s in the other room and Nora decides not to murder him, however Hank then takes one of Patch’s feathers and tries to burn it, so she shoots him in the head.
Yeah, that’s the end. Consider most of the above text is me needing to add context to things for people who don’t really remember the series or haven’t read it. Like a lot of books of its era, it’s chunky and it’s filler. There’s a homecoming lead-up plotline that doesn’t resolve. Nora does a lot of aimless driving. There’s lots of new, pointless lore (burning feathers, prophecy, devilcraft, vows) that doesn’t come together in any particular way. You know, my first draft of the first paragraph of this I just went in and talked about how much I hated the book, and then I decided I needed to tone it down and go be more wry and constructive. But ugh. I hated this book.
Nora, Patch, and the ever-changing always-same character
Nora and Patch are some of the emptiest leads out there. There’s nothing to these characters. I know well this is what you can expect from YA around here, of this trend boom, but Nora is nothing. She has no quirk or character, and despite being first person, you never feel like you’re in a head. Only a vaguely told story that you keep hoping will get to the point.
Patch is a problem. He always has been. From his first introduction sexually, physically, and emotionally harassing Nora, it’d hard to have sympathy. By now he’s our lovestruck love-interest who can do no wrong, but when you read anything about him from the outside, he just appears to be a creep. The majority of fallen angels don’t masquerade as high schoolers and hit on sixteen year olds, is what I’m saying. He stalks Nora constantly out of some idea of protection, at one point appearing behind her in a changing room while she’s putting on a dress. The narrative is crucially flawed in how much it adores him. Patch is extremely powerful, and fallen angel and nephil alike fear him. He does this while also being ungodly hot. Nora and him flirt, but half of their conversations are fights where he slips in an innuendo and she always forgives him. Like the last book, they don’t ever come across as healthy, normal, or desirable. Yet the narrative, as it is through Nora’s mind, is in fantastically deep love.
When I noted Nora had lost her memories, including all of Patch, this was actually only five months. And three of those months were kidnapping. Nora has only known Patch for two months, and the plot of these books has only been about three months since she never gets the three kidnapped months back. In this time they have broken up more than once, fought countless times, and both declared their undying love. Patch has decided he’d sacrifice everything and anything for Nora, the world’s most boring sixteen year old.
If you listed every event in the series by bullet points, there’d be a lot of them. Petty fights and school scenes and a lot of aimless driving. Yet half of those scenes would be Patch and Nora, saying the same things in the same ways to each other. There is no nail you can drive into my finger to convince me these two have chemistry, shared interests, or even particularly like each other. The refusal to change the status quo of their relationship is taken to new heights with Nora having total amnesia. Book three, 800 pages in, and the reader is forced to rewatch these two poorly communicate with a gun to their head.
Nora herself also, it must be said is an idiot. I don’t usually take too much to talk about book protagonists in YA being dumb, they usually are but whatever, but Nora is offensively so. Especially since as I’ve pointed out, the story insists she’s actually sharp and assertive.
In this book alone:
- Runs out into the city alone at night, a week after being kidnapped for three months by an unknown person, leaving behind her phone
- Sees a 7-11 being robbed and sticks around despite having no self defense abilities, and when offered the chance to leave by the robbers, stays (so she can be beat up, harassed, and saved by Patch)
- When explained about Nephilhim and Hank and the main plot by Scott, asks him what a fallen angel is. Girl!!!
- Doesn’t know what the verb ‘possess’ means
- When breaking into a warehouse and seeing a guard, tries to alert the 20 foot in the air on a fire escape Scott by first whispering his name, then throwing a rock. Which then hits the fire escape loudly.
- Insists to her immortal super powerful angel boyfriend that rather than him just go and fight and kill Hank, he has to make a blood oath she, who knows no self defense, is involved.
“Back up. Who are the fallen angels?” A gang? That’s what it sounded like. I was increasingly doubtful. Hank Miller was the last person in Coldwater who’d lower himself to associate with gangs. “What do you mean ‘possesses’?”
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Nora is the rare I-want-to-pull-my-hair protag. The first section of the novel is post kidnapping, and her mother tells her she’s started dating Hank. Nora has no idea Hank kidnapped her, and only dislikes him because he’s the father of a mean girl stereotype at her school. With this in mind, Nora immediatly acts ridiculously, yelling at her mother, feeling betrayed, and even plotting a grand scheme of going out to dinner as a family so she can make a top volume angry speech and throw Hank’s wine in his face. When she sees her mother and Hank having a nice time together, she feels so disgusted she storms out of the restruant. It’s all so childish and unlikable, and only is justified because we know Hank is the villain. Obviously he’s here up to no good. Yet from outside Nora and the book’s head, everything Nora does around him before she’s regained memory that he’s the villain reads like she’s a nine year old having a temper tantrum.
World’s worst lore watch
God god god god god. I hate Hush Hush’s angel lore. It’s not even in theory that bad from an angel lore point of view, in theory, maybe. But it’s all put together in such a clumsy, messy way. I have to again for everyone summerize it.
Fallen Angels were exiled from Heaven, and as revenege, started having sex with humans to have Nephilhim. Fallen Angels have huge V-shaped scars which are their weak spots. If you touch a fallen angel’s wing scars, you are transported randomly into their memories, always at a plot convinient space. Fallen Angels can use mind control stuff which in this book is helpfully named a ‘mind-trick’. They can implant false memories and remove memories entirely. They are super strong and immortal. They can’t feel any physical sensations but have flesh bodies. In this book we’re introduced to the idea one of them can see into the future via prophecy, so that’s new. New too is that when a fallen angel falls, the archangels keep one of their feathers. This way at any time they can banish the fallen angel to hell permanently by burning that feather.
Nephilim are half-angels. They are unaging and immortal and heal incredibly fast. They have super strength and endurence. They can do mind-trick stuff like angels. Only half-bloods, directly, have these powers, not their descendents. All nephilhim are male.
During Cheshvan, a Jewish month, fallen angels are able to possess nephilhim. Only ones they have made a vow with. This vow can be made in a state of duress and usually is. While possessed, a nephil is fully awake and experiencing everything as a squished prisoner of their body- it does not sound good.
The only way to kill a nephil is to kill one of their female descendents when she is at least 16.
The only way for a fallen angel to become human is to kill the female descendent of the vassal they are in a pact with when she’s at least 16.
Also, new! Devilcraft is a thing. It uh, glows blue, and is magic exclusive to Hell. It can do… stuff. It’s forbidden but Hank has access to it.
“He could be using devilcraft to rearrange the molecules in the air, which would explain why I’ve had a hard time tracking him.”
-Patch, 348
I hope I don’t need to explain the ridiculousness of this actual plotpoint, which comes up again. Hank is using evil devilcraft to mess with molecules. Devilcraft, the new evil magic we’ve never heard of and have no rules for, works mostly by molecular chemistry.
Also from left field, archangels have magic necklaces that can be forcibly placed on them to make them tell the truth, or can be rigged as recording devices. I’ve barely mentioned the fact Hank has an archangel in a cage this entire book, if ever. Can you blame me? It provides nothing beyond useless lore.
“If Hank puts my necklace on the archangel, she’ll have no choice but to tell him the truth. She’ll give him pure, unadulterated knowledge, and freely. But the necklace will also record the encounter, imprinting it forever.”
349. Bizarre new lore all around which is never actually used, and the archangel is freed by Patch a few scenes later.
The tragedy of an empty world
Silence is a return to the status quo of a series that only is status quo. I think though it’s very easy to know why, and track what happened with this series.
Hush hush takes place in an empty world, and each book the author is hastily putting up shoddy façades and trying to ensure us everything’s okay. The main cast is all deeply connected, and it is tiny: there are less than ten notable characters in this universe, and not even many extras beyond. Everywhere any character goes, they are haunted by another from their small world. There are no coincidences when you are the only real people in small town Maine.
It’s a lonely world, and around it the author is adding new things. Like season ten of a TV show, new elements never forwarded have to crop up or else the book won’t hit quota. You will never be able to convince me that at book one of Hush Hush, the author knew what would be in book three. Even book two. New elements of weird magic and world ‘lore’ have to be added or else there is nothing else in the story, nothing worth staying for.
The book clumsily needs to fix plot holes it’s introduced haphazardly. It is very hard to explain any of the bad lore in these books. In book two Patch takes evil fallen angel Rixon to Hell after they defeat him. Cool. This book introduces the notion you can burn a fallen angel’s feather to instantly take them to Hell, and that Patch has had Rixon’s feather this whole time and done nothing about it when he was villaining. He says here he burned Rixon’s feather in front of him once they got to Hell to rub it in, but why not do that earlier? Why do angels keep Fallen angel feathers catalogued rather than just burning them all? Fallen angels are hated and are nothing but trouble, so why leave them on earth to mess with humans and make nephil?
One of the weirdest plotholes hastily covered up is extremely hard to explain. In book one the main villain was Patch’s vassal who hated him for tricking him into giving up his body back in the 1500s. He attacks Nora to emotionally torture Nora. Nora kills herself so the vassal will die, since she’s of his bloodline, and also this will make Patch human. Patch refuses humanity for Nora’s life, so the angels bring her back, but vassal remains dead.
In book two we learn Hank is Nora’s dad and a full blooded nephil. This means her death should have killed him- instead or also. First, for there to be two full blooded nephilhim in one family some real fallen angel malarkey has to have happened, and second, this book tries to hide that sloppily. Obviously the author didn’t plan the Hank reveal ahead. This book Patch speculates Hank should have died as the closest nephil in Nora’s line, but the angels intervened because they had some deal or interest in Hank. It’s not really explained or dealt with and only raises more confusion.
This book is nothing and no one should read it.
Extra beatdown section plus bear watch
+I overhyped the bear transformation. I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry. There just was nothing else funny to tack on before the readmore.
Early in the book, Nora runs off into the night without her phone and stops at a convenience store to use the payphone. She finds its being robbed, and because it’s an empty universe that revolves around her, it’s by three fallen angels harassing one nephil. The bad guy here is Gabe, a stereotypical ne’er-do-well from the 80’s. He’s also the first of multiple times Nora is put on sexual threat, though there’s no explicit touching, only threat. YA loves goons who rape threat, and my personal conclusion is that it’s a mix of scary enough the main hero can save the day, and some weird way to get to point out the main girl is really good looking.
Anyways without warning, without preccident, without thought, Gabe turns into a literal bear.
Gabe’s eyes blackened into hollows. His hair started visibly growing, first on top of his head, and then everywhere. It tugged out from his arms, down to the tips of his fingers, until he was covered in fur. Matted, reeking brown fur. He lumbered over toward me on his hind legs, gaining height until he towered over me. He swiped his arm, and I saw a flash of claws. Then he crashed down on all fours, out his wet black nose in my face, and roared— an angry, reverberating sound. He had transformed into a grizzly bear.
112. Using long full quote because you get a good grasp of the poor writing here too.
Bears are great, but later we learned he just mind-tricked her into thinking he turned into a bear. Lame, and also doesn’t make sense considering he at one point strides over and puts his front paws on her ribs. How many sensations can a mind-trick emulate? A bear? A full bear?
+An aside: this book has one of the worst hospital scenes I’ve witnessed. After Nora gets into a car crash, she’s taken to the hospital. She hasn’t broken anything but has had stitches and bruising. The doctor tells her when wakes that the nurse has given her ibuprofen and that he’ll write her a prescription. For ibuprofen. I know I don’t do meticulous research myself, but this is ridiculous. Ibuprofen is a standard on the shelf painkiller, not even over the counter! It’s not very strong and is used for mild pains. Nora’s been in a car crash and has stitches! She even feel groggy and says she can feel the drugs in her. The. Mild painkiller ibuprofen.
I have an evil body, so I wind up taking a lot of painkillers in my life. Nora’s experience of, again, a car crash where she’s been unconscious for hours and needed stiches, is so frustrating to read. How can you know so little about basic healthcare and put it in your book? At one point the doctor surprises Nora mid sentence with an injection which he never informs her the contents. That’s not good practice and not really common unless someone has severe anxiety or problems with holding still and just waiting.
Now the doctor is an ally of Hank, and the car crash was Hank’s doing to give Nora blood. Perhaps the doctor lied- the random injection probably was a seditive- but why? She has had her evil blood transfusion and she legit needs stiches and has been injured. Give her some goddamn codeine.
+Stereotypical mean girl Marcie as always is a source of cringe. There’s multiple jokes about her having an eating disorder and being some form of ho or slut. In this book we actually get some glimpse of her as a sympathetic character, but mostly the characters and story wants to dunk on her as much as possible using tired cliché. Specifically Hush Hush loves to joke about her abusing laxatives in secret like it’s the funniest thought in the world.
This point has always been one I like to point at even easier than Patch being a stalker asshole as a reason the series is bad. I don’t know how you as a reader can justify the amount of hatred and cliché about too skinny popular girl cheerleaders who vomit and use laxatives all the time and sleep with everyone around. It’s never once funny, only angry. You have not been hurt by these fictional people, and like Patch, the narrative only rewards the hate. It is on our side, assuming we are Nora: a blank slate who’s into bad boys and is too nice to ever be thought of as hot, even though she’s attractive to everyone. This side of YA is one I have always hated and Hush Hush is the worst of it all for its constant eating disorder mockery.
+This book has a surprising amount of gore. Nephilhim can’t die, so there’s just a lot of gruesome scenes of flesh melting to the bone and open wounds that comes from nowhere.
+Nora after her kidnapping wakes up with a perfect golden tan despite being held in an isolated cabin alone. She notes her skin is darker from this tan. When she runs into Jev/Patch, she notes his skin is darker than hers… In that weird olive-skinned way authors love to use when they’re talking about white people. Patch is white, but him being called darker skin is weird. It’s positioned in her description of him as being hot and not classically beautiful. But rugged and hot. It falls a bit too much into that thing of fetishizing a ‘exotic’ look where him having darker skin than her is a sign he’s a bad boy rough boy. Mileage varies but love interests always seem to have this trait of being pointedly darker skinned, in a white way, than our super white leads.
+Demons in Hell are mentioned once in passing, fost mention demons are even real and different than fallen angels.
+Patch exclusively calls Nora’s childhood friend and nephil Scott a ‘half-breed’. He extra hates him because last book Scott was into Nora, but I don’t think it’s cool to use a kinda racist sounding term for the guy. Jeez. Nora’s a nephil too!
+It’s nonsense all nephil are male. I hate this sort of thing in books and all it makes me think is that next book Nora, the sole female nephil thanks to blood transfusion, is going to be sexually harassed some more by her army. Gee, thanks.
+Patch’s vassal’s bloodline is directly linked to Nora, and it’s weird. Fallen angels don’t have to make a vow with a nephil they personally created, so Patch isn’t related by blood to his vassal’s line. However, him in the body of his vassal easily might have had sex and contributed to the bloodline, and eventually Nora. His vassal being immortal and him using him as recently as this year means that surrogate-ness could be recent. Like, Patch might have helped conceive Nora’s grandparent is what I’m saying. It’s not a good look at all when your love interest might have had any part in your existing in the world.
+Patch can get down and dirty any time but fallen angels only feel physical sensations while in nephil hosts, obviously they’re all having lots of sex.
+The author is not Jewish. It always felt obvious but I double checked. She’s Mormon! Just… using a Jewish month as a plot point because…. uh… old timey innit? Kinda pisses me off she’s put this specifically Jewish thing in as a spicy detail just for fun. Didn’t need to be there. Nothing else Jewish. Like come on Becca.
+Don’t read Hush Hush.
Crow Defeats Books 