Hi ForeverBookers,
How are you all? I hope you all had a Happy New Year! I did.
I’ve just finished reading “Dead Voices” by Katherine Arden, a middle grade and I ABSOLUTELY LOVED it. I read Small Spaces, book 1 in the series in October 2021. I REALLY LOVED that one too! Dead Voices carries on the story from where Small Spaces ended. It’s set around a haunted ski lodge. Can Ollie, Coco and Brian escape from it and Seth, the villain? Or will they be stuck there forever. You’ll need to read it to find out!
I appreciated the chapters being quite short as well as the humorous moments, throughout. The atmosphere is creepy but there were definitely some laugh out loud moment too.
I read “Dead Voices” for a few readathons/reading challenges:
Reading Rivalry - A book I bought last year.
Always Fully Booked Reading Challenge - The second book in a series - It’s book 2 to the Small Spaces series!
Prism Oracle Card Pull - I pulled the mystery card - this works because the characters have to work out what’s going on at the haunted ski lodge. It’s a mystery just trying to figure out what is happening!
Always Fully Booked Reading Challenge - The second book in a series
“On The Cover” Reading Challenge - Trees - there are lots of trees on the cover of “Dead Voices.”
“Reading Rainbow” Reading Challenge - Blue - The cover is a dark blue colour.
“Read Through The Ages” Challenge - 2010’s - 2020’s (I think)!
“Around The World” Reading Challenge - North America - The Small Spaces series takes place in the USA.
Spoilers Below
“Winter in East Evansberg, and just after dusk, five people in a beat-up old Subaru peeled out of town in a snowstorm. Snow and road salt flew up from their tires as they got on the highway heading north,” is how Dead Voices starts. I thought this was a very ominous opening, which suited the novel perfectly. This sinister feeling carries on throughout, until the very end.
“The road tilted steeply up. On one side were trees. On the other side was a gully and a frozen creek. Ollie’s dad was driving on through the storm like he didn’t have a care in the world, telling bad jokes from the front seat.
“What did the buffalo say to his kid when he dropped him off at school?” he asked.
Ollie sighed. Her dad loved bad jokes.
“Bison!” yelped Coco triumphantly, and everyone groaned but also laughed.” This is Ollie’s dad who is a side character in “Dead Voices,” more so than in “Small Spaces,” trying to entertain everyone in the car before they get to Hemlock Lodge, the setting for this novel. “Dead Voices” has a smaller cast of main characters than “Small Spaces,” I’d say. The cast in the first novel isn’t very big, either, but there were only three main characters added to this novel, in my opinion. All the characters added their own personality. We have our three main protagonists, Ollie, Coco and Brian, Ollie’s dad, Coco’s mum, Mr Voland, who I’ll get to later, and the owners of the lodge, who aren’t main characters. Ollie’s dad and Coco’s mom play a small role in “Dead Voices.” It was nice to see adult interaction with Ollie, Coco and Brian, the main trio.
Dead Voices is more Coco’s novel, than Ollie’s or Brian’s. Ollie had Small Spaces, and I would think that Brian will have the starring role in “Dark Waters,” which is book 3. I don’t know who will have the main role in “Empty Smiles,” the fourth and final book in the quartet, but I’m excited to find out, as well as, of course being excited to read book 3 probably next summer! Each of these books takes place around a certain time of year! “Small Spaces” was set in the autumn/fall, “Dead Voices,” the winter, “Dark Waters” will be the Spring, and “Empty Smiles;” the summer, I’d guess.
As soon as they get to the lodge the three children are unsettled there. They don’t know why at first, but before they get there even, Coco has a bad dream.
“Coco fell asleep, still thinking about chess.
Coco dreamed. Not about chess.
In her dream, she was walking down a dark hallway, so long that she couldn’t see the end of it. Bars of moonlight fell across the carpet, striping it with shadows. But there weren’t any windows. Just the moonlight. It was bitterly cold. On each side were rows of plain white doors, the paint rotten and peeling. Behind one of the doors, Coco heard someone crying.
But behind which door? There seemed to be hundreds. “Where are you?” Coco called.
“I can’t find them,” whimpered a girl’s voice. “I’ve looked everywhere, but I can’t find them. Mother says I can’t go home until I find them.” This dream is the precursor to other events in the novel.
Coco is a chess freak. She’s a great player too, as is seen later in the story. Following this dream, Ollie has a nightmare.
“In her dream, someone was pulling at her sleeve.
“Go ‘way,” Ollie murmured. Even in her sleep, she wanted to sleep. But the tugging kept on.
A small voice whispered, “Please, can you help me?”
Dream-Ollie opened her eyes. She saw a girl about her own age standing by her bed, dressed in a long, white nightgown. The girl’s face was in shadow. The whole room was full of shadow and moonlight. “Can you help?” whispered the girl again in a thin, scratchy voice. “No one else wants to help.”
Ollie is talking to a ghost in her dream called Gretel. Gretel is one of the secondary characters. She becomes a catalyst later in the novel. For good or bad, though? You’ll need to read to find out! Another secondary character is a young dead skier, or ghost called Gabriel. We’re not sure if he’s good or evil either, right up until the end. Is he working for evil Seth and Mother Hemlock or will he help Ollie, Coco and Brian escape? You’ll have to read to find out for yourself!
A main character is Mr. Voland. He enters the story at around quarter of the way through. He’s a mystery at first. But it’s revealed by around half way that he is in fact the smiling man, or Seth the antagonist in this series.
“Cold terror filled Ollie. She stared at Mr. Voland. He smiled back at her. “Is my dad okay?” she whispered.
“Just asleep,” he said. “But he will not wake. Not tonight.”
Ollie’s mouth was completely, utterly dry. “You,” she croaked, licked her lips, tried again. “Who are you?”
“I think you know,” he said.
She did. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want it to be true. But it was, and she did. Stammering, Ollie said, “But you—you were different. The last time.”
His smile was colder than the freezing lodge. “I never look the same twice,” he said. “Where would the fun be in that?”
Now she recognized the smile. Ollie, if she lived to be a hundred, she could never forget that particular smile. How could she not have known? How could she not have recognised him the second he walked into the lodge?
But maybe he hadn’t wanted her to recognize him. Maybe he knew how to hide somehow.
“You—” Ollie could barely bring herself to say it. “You’re Seth. You’re the Smiling Man.”
Seth laughed, and it was Mr. Voland’s warm, happy laugh. But then his smile widened until it wasn’t a smile at all but a specter’s gruesome grin, all teeth. “Discovered at last,” he said. “I wondered how long it would take you.”
This is when the trio discover that Don Voland, an apparent ghost catcher, is indeed the smiling man. I thought this was done really well. I could tell this point was coming as “Dead Voices” is part of a middle grade series, and I could predict this reveal, but that didn’t make the pay off any less satisfying. I liked how Don said “Discovered at last,” and “I wondered how long it would take you,” as if he was expecting them to work out who he was. I find the smiling man or Seth, as he’s also known, to be an interesting villain, more because he’s funny in his antics, as well as evil. Like for example how he laughs. He’s really playing a game with the trio. A sick and demented game, but its a game nonetheless. Ollie knows that Don Voland is the smiling man first! I liked the way he said, “I think you know,” too, like he was having a joke with Ollie, Coco and Brian.
The rest of the novel is about how the trio of children get the answers they need to get out of the game that Seth, the smiling man, and Don Voland, as he’s all three of these personas, is playing with them. Can they make it out alive? Or will one or two or all of them get caught? Will the next book be about them escaping from the Smiling Man or an entirely new mystery? You’ll need to read to find out! I certainly can’t WAIT to find out!
Overall, then I loved “Dead Voices!” It had everything from great atmosphere to great characters to an interesting plot. If anything I would have extended the book a little bit to give the characters a little more time to come up with or see how they figured out the solution. That part felt kind of rushed at the end. There was a big info dump right at the end too, explaining how Coco worked out the problem and the steps she took to solve it. But at the end of the day it is a middle grade novel, so I knew it wouldn’t be a great mystery/thriller or anything, just a fun time, which it definitely was! That’s why I’m giving “Dead Voices” five stars!!!!! I didn’t expect it to have any big, shocking twists and those it did have were pretty good, if a little predictable because of the age range it’s marketed at. It’s not the book’s fault that I’m older than its intended age range. That’s why I’m giving the book five stars. It definitely delivers on atmosphere, characters, plot, writing, intrigue, logic and enjoyment for me! If anything, the logic was what was the lowest of these points. But as I said, it’s middle grade so not everything HAS to make sense to an adult brain, necessarily, as long as the reader, whatever their age finds enjoyment in it!
Next I’m rereading Gild by Raven Kennedy, a book I read in 2022. I’ll link my review to that one here so you can read it if you want. I might add a few details after my reread - http://foreverbooks18.blogspot.com/2022/03/gild-1-plated-prisoner-by-raven-kennedy.html. What I’m saying is that there won’t be another review for Gild. I’ll just add to this one if at all.
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