In a distant, future world Kinsmen—small powerful groups of genetically and technologically advanced families—control vast financial empires. They are their own country, their own rulers, and their only limits are other Kinsmen. The struggle for power is a bloody, full-contact sport: in business, on the battlefield…and sometimes in the bedroom. 
Claire Shannon is a killer…and her weapon is her mind.
Born on a planet torn by war for over 300 years, Claire is a soldier: a psycher, with the ability to read, control, and destroy the minds of enemy psychers and to infiltrate the biological network where they battle to death.
When Claire’s faction loses the war, she barely escapes extermination from both sides, as her talent brands her as too dangerous to society. By so-deeply burying her ability that she avoids detection, Claire is instead deported to Rada as a refugee, where she must find work to remain. She finds a job as personal assistant to Venturo Escana, a premiere kinsman; one of Rada’s most wealthy entrepreneurs—and most powerful psychers.
She thought she had left war behind, but now she must hide her skills and her growing feelings from Venturo…and this battle might just cost her everything…

‘Silver Shark‘ is set in the same universe as ‘Silent Blade‘ and shares some of the same characters, but it is very different in tone and pace. ‘Silent Blade‘ was a story about a struggle between two members os the Kinsmen privileged elite, ‘Silver Shark‘ is the story of a refugee from a seventy-year-long war that has driven a planet into poverty, who has to hide her abilities and her identity to avoid deportation and death. It’s a much harder-edged and more violent story. 

‘Silver Shark‘ is a strong science fiction novella that examines power, obligation, honour and the necessities of survival. The tension is high. The action is frequent and vivid. The tension between the female refugee and her Kinsmen boss, who has no idea of her abilities, is handled with Ilona Andrews’ usual flair. 

I was impressed by the empathy the story created for the refugee and the refusal to simplify her situation. This isn’t a woman who shrugs off her past and starts again. She’s a woman who has to hide her identity and who, despite the fact that the world she came from was brutal and without beauty, still has loyalties to her people that prevent her from living only by the rules of her new world. 

The most visually stunning aspect of the novella was the creation of a Bionet, a data system that can only be accessed and protected by people with the ability to manifest themselves in the virtual environment. Everyone who enters the environment envisages it differently, but for all of them, it is a dangerous and potentially deadly environment. The combat scenes in the Bionet were spectacular.