Dark Waters

Dark Waters

By Katherine Arden

Until next time. That was chilling promise made to Ollie, Coco and Brian after they outsmarted the smiling man at Mount Hemlock Resort. And as the trio knows, the smiling man always keeps his promises. So when the lights flicker on and off at Brian's family's inn and a boom sounds at the door, there's just one visitor it could be. Only, there's no one there, just a cryptic note left outside signed simply as —S.

The smiling man loves his games and it seems a new one is afoot. But first, the three friends will have to survive a group trip to Lake Champlain where it's said Vermont's very own Loch Ness monster lives. When they’re left shipwrecked on an island haunted by a monster on both land and sea, Brian's survival instincts kick in and it's up to him to help everyone work together and find a way to escape.

One thing is for sure, the smiling man is back and he wants a rematch. And this time Brian is ready to play. 

I zipped right through this one, and my only complaint, really, is that it felt very short, compared the first two.  I read it on a device, and the little ticker said the book ended at 75%, the other 25% being previews of other books.  I didn't want to read the preview of the next book, Empty Smiles since I wanted to get to it all at once.  So I was left wanting more, which isn't a bad thing, but I am glad that I waited so long to read this one, so I don't have too much longer before the next (and final) book is published.  

In fact, I read this one akin to when events were happening in the book, i.e., a Saturday in early May, although I was not at Lake Champlain, sadly.  And it looks like the next one takes place in August, so from this time to then, I will assume poor Ollie is lost in the mirror world.  That's a long ass time!

Because of the cover, I was thinking that this might take place underwater (I mean, if you can do a mirror world, you can do an underwater world I suppose) and I was thinking that was kind of stupid, so I'm glad Arden didn't go for that.  It's also interesting to me how she manages to keep the adults on the other side of these supernatural shenanigans even where they're clearly necessary to keep the plot mostly believable (send four kids out on a boat by themselves? yeah, that would have been a stretch).  It may be a low bar, but I appreciate the effort she put into making it at least semi-realistic in the context of this children's ghost story.  

This one is more of a straight monster story than the previous two.  While, yes, scarecrows are scary, they were more the minions of the Smiling Man.  Here, although I assume the Smiling Man is implicated in the whole set-up, the lake monster is more of a creature-feature, like, uh... Anaconda.  While there's a ghost involved (more than one), he's a nice ghost, who's willing to kill you so as to avoid your slow death by hunger/giant snake.  I like the change of pace, and am (again) impressed at Arden's ability to both incorporate horror tropes, and also switch it up so we don't read the same story four times.  

I would say that this feels less like a complete book, both because it feels shorter than the other two books, but also because it leads into and sets up book four.  We're left on a more significant cliffhanger and frankly, haven't even made it safely back to shore yet when the book ends (and really reckoning with the fact that Phil's uncle was eaten by a lake monster... although as Phil says, it's how he would have wanted to go).  

This is Brian's turn to shine (I assume Phil will narrate the final book in the quartet) and he's okay, but doesn't bring a lot of special abilities to the fore.  It seems like both Coco and Ollie take more of an active approach to the problem while Brian and Phil are mostly along for the ride.  It's not bad, just feels a little bit shallower. 

 

I really wanted to read this one, and so I entered into the spirit of the challenge, by selecting this for a "Sister Lake" exchange instead of a Sister City.  Honestly, I'm pretty excited by the other book too, I'm looking forward to learning more about Lake Toba.

49: Two Books Set in Twin Towns Lakes, aka "Sister Cities Lakes"