Prayer of Silence, the fifth book in the Unnamed Memory series, is rather odd. At random times, the novel’s like, “Hey, you know the stuff we’ve been covering? Yeah, ignore that and let’s bring up something completely different.”
The mysterious Valt and his companion are a perfect example. At times, they star in short scenes where they drop hints as to what they’re plotting, and with so many of these, you expect the start of the world-changing event that the first volume alluded to. Instead, the book switches to a battle involving Tinasha repaying a personal favor to the demon Travis. I’ve been wanting to learn more about him and his human charge, but it isn’t a smooth segue into their arc. With these lengthy volumes and the time reset, I actually kind of forgot about Travis.
Okay, not forgot forgot, but when the novel spends so much time on Tinasha and Oscar and the mysterious Valt, it’s easy to get caught up on these paths and mentally shelve all the plot points you wanted to head down. Another example: the Witch of Silence, who makes a rather sudden debut. There’s also the fact that (and this is not really a spoiler since it’s part of the opening color pages) Oscar proposes to Tinasha and becomes more like the previous timeline’s Oscar. Which seems rather abrupt since this Oscar treated Tinasha much like a child; she tells him so, but she certainly did often act immature. The novel explains Oscar’s seemingly about-face, but I didn’t believe it — or maybe feel it would be more accurate? Anyway, for being over 300 pages, there are times where I felt like I missed something.
I will say the time traveling part of the story does become more intriguing here. That may sound tame, but I do mean this as a big compliment since I didn’t like Act I’s ending’s plot twist. I still wouldn’t say I love the time travel aspect, but I definitely dislike it less now. It helps there’s more of a moral ambiguity here surrounding using the orb, so there are a lot of physical and emotional conflicts are bubbling from that. We see one character object to its use here, but the matter of the orbs is hardly settled.
I was not a fan how Prayer of Silence brought in new conflicts and is leaving Valt and his allies for the final volume, but I will say the book moved a bit faster than some previous volumes. The second half has most of the action with several battles in a short span, but the first half isn’t only dedicated to romance. Unnamed Memory has never been terrible, but sometimes the sheer length of the volumes plus making whole sections focus exclusively on either the love story or the action often made me slog through. The pace here was consistent, and fans who favor one of those genres over the other won’t have long periods of downtime.
Unnamed Memory will draw to a close in the next volume, and I wish it had done a little better job of either building toward a climax and covering older plot points. As engaging as Prayer of Silence can be, it’s a little too jarring as it switches from the former to the latter.