The Silver Ship and the Sea [Hardcover]

Brenda Cooper (Author)

Book Description

Series: Silver Ship | Publication Date: March 20, 2007

The colony planet Fremont is joyous, riotous, and very wild.  Its grasses can cut your arms and legs to ribbons, the rinds of its precious fruit can skewer your thumbs, and some of the predators are bigger than humans.  Meteors fall from the sky and volcanoes erupt.  Fremont is verdant, rich, beautiful, and dangerous. 
Fremont's single town, Artistos, perches on a cliff below rugged mountains.  Below Artistos lie the Grass Plains, which lead down to the sea.  And in the middle of the Grass Plains, a single silver spaceship lies quiet and motionless.  The seasons do not dull it, nor do the winds scratch it---and the fearful citizens of Aristos won't go near it.  
Chelo Lee, her brother Joseph, and four other young children have been abandoned on the colony planet. Unfortunate events have left them orphaned in a human colony that abhors genetic engineering--and these six young people are genetically enhanced.  
With no one to turn to, Chelo and the others must now learn how to use their distinct skills to make this unwelcome planet home, or find a way off it. They have few tools--an old crazy woman who wonders the edges of town, spouting out cryptic messages; their appreciation and affection for each other; a good dose of curiosity; and that abandoned silver space ship that sits locked and alone in the middle of the vast grass plain …
 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cooper's first solo flight into SF (after Building Harlequin's Moon, with Larry Niven) doesn't quite get off the deadly colony planet Fremont, where 12 years earlier war raged between the original pure-human settlers and the "altered" (bioengineered) second wave of colonists. Adolescent heroine Chelo Lee, orphaned by that war and adopted by the leader-couple of the planet's only city, Artistos, leads the other five living altered youths to the silver spaceship New Making that had brought their parents to Fremont. With the help of Jenna, the only surviving altered adult, Chelo dreams of freeing herself and the other altereds from the paranoid subjugation of the Fremontians, who both fear and need the youngsters' gifts. The lack of psychological development in this sluggish and predictable growing-up excursion may limit its appeal to preteen readers. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Cooper's first solo novel is an engrossing tale of six young outsiders growing up on a colony planet. They were left behind as young children, descendants of a group of "altered" (genetically modified) people who landed on the planet and ultimately fought with its original colonists. Now 12 years have gone by, the "altered" children are teens, and many members of the colony are profoundly uneasy about them. The story is narrated by the eldest, Chelo. They are all big, strong, and fast, and each one has a special skill. When an earthquake literally shakes everything up, Chelo and her friends find themselves drawn to Jenna, the one remaining "altered" adult, who lives on the fringes of society, and to the spaceship that the "altered" left behind. The teens begin to find out who they really are, and what they might become someday. This is an adventure story, because life on this planet can be treacherous, but it is also a story about the relationships between insiders and outsiders, between adults and the teens who are about to surpass them, and between people who need each other in order to survive.—Sarah Flowers, Santa Clara County Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (March 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765315971
• ISBN-13: 978-0765315977
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,644,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brenda Cooper has published fiction in Analog, Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Nature, and in multiple anthologies. She is the author of the Endeavor award winner for 2008: THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, and of the sequel, READING THE WIND. Brenda lives in Bellevue, Washington, with her partner Toni, Toni's daughter Katie, two border collies, and a golden retriever. By day, she is the City of Kirkland's CIO, and at night and in early morning hours, she's a futurist and writer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fight, flight, or peace?, April 8, 2007

By 

Eleanor Skinner (Albany, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Silver Ship and the Sea (Hardcover)

I tried this book on a slightly expensive whim, and was not disappointed. It's a little like Pamela Sargent's Earthseed, only better. The setting is the colony world Fremont, which was settled by a group of humans who believe genetically altered humans are abominations. Then another ship full of colonists, altered colonists, lands, and war breaks out. The altered humans are killed or leave, and 6 altered children remain as adopted kids whose official status is 'prisoner of war.' Chelo, the protagonist is one of those 6 kids. It's years after the war, and the altered children are surrounded by suspicion, fear, and occasional love. They are coming to adulthood and discovering their talents in this atmosphere, and things start coming to a head after Chelo's adoptive parents, the colony's leaders, die in an accident. It was very hard to put down. The ending was somewhat unexpected, and not cookie-cutter. A very good book.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre, October 8, 2008

By 

Open-Minded Reader (Pittsburg, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Silver Ship and the Sea (Mass Market Paperback)

The book was neither bad nor good - it just "was." The pace was far too slow and the storyline was a bit juvenile at times. I did not find it very interesting, I simply read it because I like to finish what I start. The storytelling was often flat in places which made it very hard for me to get into the world Cooper created. I found the snippets about the world the colonists came from much more interesting than the story being told. Again, it was neither bad nor good. I cannot recommend it to other readers, but at the same time I will not discourage other readers, either.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Endeavour Award winner is a good story for YA and Adults, February 6, 2009

By 

M. Holt (Kitsap County WA or Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Silver Ship and the Sea (Mass Market Paperback)

Brenda Cooper has written a strong and engaging book. I found her characterizations credible because she used no blatant archetypes: I probably know someone like almost everyone in the book, including the "altered" teens. There is no arch-villain, instead the teens face prejudice from influential adults. She deftly handles the questions of "who do you trust," "who do you love," and "who do you tolerate." I found the pacing of the story kept me reading. There is very little physical violence, as in real life the question of how one survives is much more complicated than that. It is no wonder the book won the 2008 Endeavour Award for science fiction literature.