Customer Reviews

The Silver Metal Lover

5 star:		(91)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Tanith Lee really, really shines in this novel. I don't think her writing was ever so good as in this book. Her character, Jane (Jain) is exceptionally written, superbly realistic, heartbreakingly wise. Her lover, Silver, at first infuriated me with his cold, non-human perfection -how can a robot love you, and does he really love you if he is programmed to love everyone else just as much?- but as the story grows, Silver skyrockets into a real, true character, as human as they come.

This is a beautiful love story, and it's definitely withstood one test; it's being reprinted!!!! Most books, once out of print, stay that way, sadly (the book Fire and Hemlock by D.W.Jones comes quickly to mind). Also, I must say The Silver Metal Lover passed another test; so far, all (twenty-five) reviews already up here are five-stars. Does this ever happen?

To anyone who hasn't read the book; Go directly to your nearest bookstore and buy a copy! Then, sit down somewhere comfortable and with access to lots of food and tissues, because you won't be getting back up for a long time, and when you do, you'll be drenched in tears. When I read it the first time, I could NOT put it down, and I had classes the next day (I ended up reading till dawn)!

This book truly is timeless, beautiful, heartbreaking. Highest recommendation!

I first dicovered Tanith Lee with the book Sabella when I was in 6th grade, many many years ago. I was immediately a devotee for life. The Silver Metal Lover is the only book I've ever reread more than 3 times. I still have my original copy of this book & I'm glad to see it's back in print. This is simply the most incredible & wonderful book I've ever read, but you really do need a whole box of kleenex for this one too. This is simply the most touching book I've ever read: you end up hanging on every word, feeling everything that Jane feels. Yes, you will end up in love with Silver & you will put this book down a changed person. The most moving book I've ever read. EVER. Get a copy, NOW. There is a reason that this book has so many reviews and it's still a five star rating. Good books are like good friends: you never tire of them. This book will be one of your best friends for life.

Tanith Lee, like no other writer I've ever read, can make you feel just what it's like to walk in the shoes of her characters. They come completely alive for you. No one else has such a command of the english language- how to make words on a page paint such a vivid picture. Get The Silver Metal Lover. And any other novel by Tanith Lee you can get your hands on. You won't be sorry.

This was more like a work of art than just a mere book...although not as perfectly, flawlessly rendered as a Da Vinci, it was at least as interesting and thought provoking as a Picasso. At times its lines were a little blurred and not entirely pretty, but it was so powerful and compelling and confronting, I just couldn't look away. I was drawn into it, and when I reached the end of the book, I had to admit that it was a masterpiece, and one ahead of its time for that matter.

I don't know what I can say about this book that hasn't already been said by the other reviewers, but I'll try. It's amazing, it's brilliant, it's ultra-realistic (you'll swear the world that Jane and Silver inhabit really exists), it's a heart-wrenching love story, it's an insightful commentary on life and personal relationships, and at the end of it, unless you have a heart of stone, you'll have used up a box of tissues crying and feel like a changed person. There's not many books that make me FEEL the way this one did...it even affected my sleep the night after I read it. I just couldn't get it out of my head. Some books simply entertain. But this one got under my skin and stayed there.

To the author's credit, this book hasn't dated in the quarter of a century since it was written, but still feels fresh and contemporary, as if it were written quite recently. It's a timeless story, and in this case, that's not just a cliche. At the time this book was written, modern gadgets like computers and ATMs were just coming on the scene and a lot of people were worried that machines would take over the jobs and even the lives of people. This book reflects what was a real fear at that time, and perhaps still is today, what with the current trend towards large-scale industrial automation and voice-recognition phone systems et al. It's an ongoing dilemma...can machines really replace people? And as this book asks, can they replace people even in our hearts? I've seen people who are so in love with their computers and the internet that they no longer seem to live in the real world or communicate with real people, so maybe the character of Jane in this book, who falls in love with a robot, isn't such an anomaly after all.

This is the first Tanith Lee book I've read, but I nonetheless have a feeling that this is the beginning of a great love affair between myself and her books...

This going to be a short but sweet report on one of the best book's i have ever read.

From the moment you start reading a Tanith Lee book, you know that you are going to be in for a fun and exciting read. Right from the off set, you will find yourself imersed into a strange but compelling land off the future, but there is still the hint that this could happen any time tomorrow, with the technology and information that we are finding all the time. In the first few pages you get to know all the people that will be involved through out the story, but passed every page there is a small twist that becomes huge by the end of the book. All the way through you will be thinking, who is going to betray the affare and what can you do to escape from society. There are so many poinient things that happen in this book and it is only a couple of pages later that you think, my god, why did you do that. Then you come to points in the book when you think that everything is going to be ok, but you will find that the tenshon will never drop from the beginning to the end. Tanith Lee is a fantastic writer with a class of her own. A fantastic book with Romance thrown in. If you are only going to buy one book this year,then this is the one to buy. Have a fantastic read Roman...

At first all I can say is... well, I'm speechless. This is such a wonderful book; the best sci fi I've read since Shade's Children. I found The Silver Metal Lover in a local used bookstore recently, and I began to read it as soon as I could. I finished it the next day. The first few sentences caught me, and I couldn't put the book down. The content was truly something I had never read about before, and never really thought about (except while being forced to watch Bladerunner with my dad).

This book is about a city in the future. Robots are employed with jobs that humans used to have, thus causing much unemployment among the humans. Then Electronic Metals Inc. comes out with a new Sophisticated type of robot, a type that can act, sing, or dance. These robots are designed purely to entertain and to give pleasure. But this only enrages the unemployed humans more, thinking that if robots can even be artistic and entertaining, what chance do humans have against them?

A sixteen-year-old girl, Jane, meets one of these Silver robots one day, and she is for some reason horrified by him. She goes home, not knowing what to tell her mother. Then her friend Egyptia invites Jane to a party, and Jane goes, hoping to get her mind off the robot. But at the party, she discovers that the robot has been hired to sing. She is once again overcome with emotion, and she realizes that she is disturbingly and hopelessly in love with a machine.

This story tells how Jane and Silver become friends, and fall in love... but robots are not programmed to REALLY fall in love, only to feel pleasure at the happiness of others. But Silver is showing more and more signs of becoming human, and Jane wonders if there is more to him than just a few nuts and bolts.

I cried several times in the course of reading this book; it's such an emotional rollercoaster. I find that the best way to enjoy the book is to put yourself in Jane's place, and live everything right along with her. It will touch you that much more deeply. If you like romance or sci fi or both, I highly recommend The Silver Metal Lover. It is now one of my favorite books, to be placed on a special bookshelf designated for the books that touched me the most.

Before I started reading this book, I expected it to be an amusing and maybe kinky sci-fi romance. The more I read, the more I was impressed not only with the well-written love story, but also with the heart-warmingly poetic writing, and most of all with the thought-provoking philosophical themes that lie just beneath the surface.

This book raises ideas about what the personality of a perfect human might be like. Silver is programmed to act human, but he is not programmed for negative emotions such as pain, fear, or anger. His kindness and eternal patience help Jane, the highly sensitive and sometimes paranoid protagonist, to come to grips with her life and her attitudes. Tanith Lee blurs the line between humans and robots, giving insight by comparison on what makes humans tick and what potential we have to better ourselves.

Though this book is not as well-known as many fantasy classics, I consider it right up there with the best. If you enjoy fantasy or science fiction that has an interesting storyline *and* some deep meaning, do yourself a favor and read this book.

At a self-conscious 14, I was embarrassed borrowing a love story about a girl and a robot from the school library. That this book became one of the very few books to make me ache inside and bring me to the brink of tears even 13 years and 20 rereadings later is a testimony to Tanith Lee's skill as a writer. There are so many wonderful elements in this book: her eerily beautiful future Earth (especially Jane's mother's house in the clouds), the characters (Clovis is glorious), and the sensitive depiction of Jane and how falling in love with Silver changes her life. This book, written in the first person, is so well-written that it sounds convincingly like a sheltered 16 year old girl yet never patronises her emotions. The Silver Metal Lover will always be one of my all time favorite books.

I only bought this book because of the amazing reviews it got and because it was by one of my favorite authors, Tanith Lee. I had absalutely no interest in reading it, I thought the plot was going to be horrible. A girl falling in love with a robot? Please. But then I started reading.
It was amazing. I even cried at one point in the book, something no book has ever made me do. This beautiful and touching story reveals that love is more than something human. Like the story's protagonist, Jane, I too have fallen for something that supposedly one cannot fall in love with. I have fallen in love with this book.

Do not read this book all in one sitting. 'The Silver Metal Lover' is a book to be sipped at, taken in a delicate chapter at a time; with the sensual nature of the book, it's to be enjoyed in slices like fine fruit, not devoured and left unsavored.

This is the story of a child--for she is not yet a woman at sixteen--who falls in love for the first time... with a creature unhuman. More then human, in some aspects. She loves this creature suddenly, stricken with it's beauty and does everything im her power to possess him.

However, once she has him, she finds that not only is he capable and beautiful, he is intelligent, he is knowing, and he is... flawed. Neraly human, this robot called Silver becomes the most important thing in her life, and in turn, she becomes his.

It is a love story in the most haunting of styles with Tanith Lee's usual, elegant writing. I know that over the final chapter, I cried, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who will be moved by this highly emotional, stirring account of this woman's love, and yes, loss. Pick up this book today.

Jane is a rich young woman living on an Earth remade by natural disasters. She falls in love for the first time with a robot called Silver, and feels like her life has been thrown into disarray. One of her friends, Clovis (a gay man), helps her to be with Silver, and Jane runs away from home to live with Silver in one of the worse-off areas of the city. Silver and Jane live happily for some time, with each teaching the other what it means to be human, to be living, until the company which created Silver seeks to reclaim him due to his "flaws". Tanith Lee's fascinating novel is the story of growing up, of becoming one's own self apart from family and friends, of developing one's own beliefs and persona. This is the type of book which gets better the longer one digests it. It's a celebration of first love, even one that ends sadly.