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"

Dead Voices

Dead Voices

By Katherine Arden

 

Having survived sinister scarecrows and the malevolent smiling man in Small Spaces, newly minted best friends Ollie, Coco, and Brian are ready to spend a relaxing winter break skiing together with their parents at Mount Hemlock Resort. But when a snowstorm sets in, causing the power to flicker out and the cold to creep closer and closer, the three are forced to settle for hot chocolate and board games by the fire.

Ollie, Coco, and Brian are determined to make the best of being snowed in, but odd things keep happening. Coco is convinced she has seen a ghost, and Ollie is having nightmares about frostbitten girls pleading for help. Then Mr. Voland, a mysterious ghost hunter, arrives in the midst of the storm to investigate the hauntings at Hemlock Lodge. Ollie, Coco, and Brian want to trust him, but Ollie's watch, which once saved them from the smiling man, has a new cautionary message: BEWARE.

With Mr. Voland's help, Ollie, Coco, and Brian reach out to the dead voices at Mount Hemlock. Maybe the ghosts need their help--or maybe not all ghosts can or should be trusted.

 

I picked this one up last fall as a fun aside, and I will be darned if it isn't just as good, if not better than, the first in the series, Small Spaces.  Whatever else Ms. Arden is, she's  a fantastic writer of children's horror.  Not only did it manage to create a brand new story with a new wintery location and spookiness factor (ghosts this time, instead of animated scarecrows), it made me really eager to read the next in the series.  It never felt stale or rehashed, not even (Spoiler Alert!) when we discovered that the bad man was the same smiling man who orchestrated the first go-round.  

 It also really worked that the kids remembered what happened in the first book and really tried to learn from it.  They didn't make stupid choices like splitting up or falling for them ghost tricks.  It's a lesson for us all - no matter how much you know, you can still sometimes be surprised by a supernatural demon and a bunch of old ghosts.  And honestly, even though I knew FOR SURE Mr. Voland was bad news, the lead up didn't aggravate me, but made me question whether I was reading the room right (I was), so it wasn't annoying that the kids weren't more cautious.  

It did throw me a little bit when we started switching narrators between Coco and Ollie, mostly because (AS ALWAYS) I forgot which one was which since I read the first in the series, and I was like, "I remember the main character being... different".  But  we get that wrapped up, and hopefully Brian comes into his own in the next one. 

The ending was also much clearer and less vague than Small Spaces - the whole thing felt really tight, what with the initial scene setting, the trip through the mirror, and the final battle.  Not as much confusion about who was who or how Ollie "won" or anything like that. I told my husband without any shame at all that I was really enjoying this children's horror book, and while I'm sure he thought I was being ridiculous, this is becoming one of my favorite series.  I stalked the author's blog and I'm pretty sure the next one is set in the summer with a LAKE, and it's like, the use of all these classic horror tropes to create this is so thrilling.  I honestly wouldn't have thought it could be done without becoming trite, or cliche, or expected, but it definitely is working so far.

 

Small Spaces

Small Spaces

By Katherine Arden

After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie only finds solace in books. So when she happens upon a crazed woman at the river threatening to throw a book into the water, Ollie doesn't think--she just acts, stealing the book and running away. As she begins to read the slender volume, Ollie discovers a chilling story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who both loved her, and a peculiar deal made with "the smiling man," a sinister specter who grants your most tightly held wish, but only for the ultimate price.

Ollie is captivated by the tale until her school trip the next day to Smoke Hollow, a local farm with a haunting history all its own. There she stumbles upon the graves of the very people she's been reading about. Could it be the story about the smiling man is true? Ollie doesn't have too long to think about the answer to that. On the way home, the school bus breaks down, sending their teacher back to the farm for help. But the strange bus driver has some advice for the kids left behind in his care: "Best get moving. At nightfall they'll come for the rest of you." Nightfall is, indeed, fast descending when Ollie's previously broken digital wristwatch, a keepsake reminder of better times, begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN.

Only Ollie and two of her classmates heed the bus driver's warning. As the trio head out into the woods--bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them--the bus driver has just one final piece of advice for Ollie and her friends: "Avoid large places. Keep to small."

I do think that children's stories (and children, really) have a better grasp on visceral horror.  Yes, it's terrifying to be chased by a masked killer, but you know what will scar you for life? A man with hot dogs for fingers, with the ends split out.  Just ask me and my brother, courtesy of Nothing But Trouble.  It's like what the Counting Crows asked: We were perfect when we started/I've been wondering where we've gone" - the answer is Nothing But Trouble, my friend.  Even thinking of it today makes me want to vomit.  Now that's horror.  Or, conversely, a scarecrow skinning an old farmer. Shoutout to Harold!  Adult horror is about real things, twisted, or targeting you.  Children's horror is about that stomach-churning feeling you have before the figure turns and you realize that the person's hand you've been holding isn't your mother after all.

That's the good thing about it.  However, it can be hard to sustain for long periods.  I do think that the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series is the apex of children's horror, as they manage to get in, get the job done, and get out in like, ten pages or less.  Books are much harder to keep tense for that length of time, although I do think there are some recent good ones: Boneshaker, which is definitely more children's than YA, and bears some similarities to the classic Something Wicked This Way Comes, as it plays on the fear of the carnival (and come on, who isn't scared of carnivals?  I once got extremely ripped off by a carny, and frankly was lucky not to face worse).  In the older category, I think The Diviners created a bogeyman that felt like he hadn't been created by Bray at all but stolen from our collective imagination.  I don't think the sequels were as successful in that, though.

Anyway, three paragraphs in, maybe I'll finally start talking about Small Spaces.  It's good!  It is a horror story, or a ghost story, but not a horror ghost story, because it's also about grieving and accepting that sometimes, it's just better not to raise the dead.  (With all due respect to Stephen King and Buffy, at least Ollie has the sense to figure that out before the dead get raised).

I really like Arden's work in the Winternight Trilogy, which I've reviewed here earlier, and Small Spaces is also well written and spooky.  The biggest hurdle is keeping the tension up throughout the entire book.  It's about two hundred pages, and the first half is a lot of set up - Ollie's mother's death, Ollie's frustration with the school system and her fellow classmates, her taking the book and getting wrapped up in it, and then increasingly concerned during the school trip to the farm.  I don't know if the pacing is entirely successful, although I don't think a longer book is the answer. It was very nicely atmospheric (can't go wrong with fog and scarecrows, as Harold knows) and would be a fun read on an autumn night.  The messages on her watch also allow Arden to keep her characters moving forward without forcing too much guesswork or unrealistic knowledge on them - the obviousness of the deus ex machina somehow makes it more palatable.

I also don't know that it quite coalesced at the end - she poured some water on the scarecrows, and that turned them to dust, but then it also started raining?  It's a little glossed over, while I need everything spelled out.  It also wasn't clear to me why this one particular family kept running afoul of the Man even though at the end it seemed like he would do a deal with anyone, and if anyone would be reluctant to make bargains, you'd think it would be the descendants of the ones who had already faced him and lost.

 On the whole though, it's a clever, well-written addition to the pantheon of children's horror.  It's also (as you'll see in other reviews) a lovely coming to terms with grief and letting someone go, and finding joy in life again. Ollie's mother's death haunts Ollie, but as everyone could stand to learn as a child: just because it's a spook, doesn't make it bad.  Embrace your inner demon!

36: A Ghost Story

The Winter of the Witch

The Winter of the Witch 

By Katherine Arden 

The Winternight Trilogy introduced an unforgettable heroine, Vasilisa Petrovna, a girl determined to forge her own path in a world that would rather lock her away. Her gifts and her courage have drawn the attention of Morozko, the winter-king, but it is too soon to know if this connection will prove a blessing or a curse.

Now Moscow has been struck by disaster. Its people are searching for answers—and for someone to blame. Vasya finds herself alone, beset on all sides. The Grand Prince is in a rage, choosing allies that will lead him on a path to war and ruin. A wicked demon returns, stronger than ever and determined to spread chaos. Caught at the center of the conflict is Vasya, who finds the fate of two worlds resting on her shoulders. Her destiny uncertain, Vasya will uncover surprising truths about herself and her history as she desperately tries to save Russia, Morozko, and the magical world she treasures. But she may not be able to save them all.

After two duds, I was very glad to get back to Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy.  This one was a bit of a freebie, since I had already read - and loved - the first two, I had a pretty good idea I would enjoy this one.  Although sometimes trilogies end in disappointment!  I'm reminded I still have the Tearling trilogy unfinished, because by the time the third came out, I realized I needed to re-read the second as a refresher, and, well, reviews were kinda negative, so I never bothered.  Invasion of the Tearling is still sitting out, waiting for me.  Oops.

Anyway, I have no such ill-news on The Winter of the Witch (which I keep calling the Season of the Witch, because that song is just a perfect earworm).  It's great!  Very boring, I know.  The reviews are a lot easier when you can just bitch for three pages.  Not to say that the book is boring, in fact, it starts off almost immediately with a tragedy, a beheading, and a frantic flight, that give it a feel that you're really jumping straight from the second book to the third without pause.  Literally, since the third is set immediately after the second.  Even after that though, it slows and picks up speed in ways that you don't expect.  There's a big climactic battle that you think would be the finale in another book, but you've got another whole narrative to finish.  [Sidebar: I don't think I reviewed this one here, but another great book that does this is The Library at Mount Char, which really gets you there, gets you wondering what else is there to do, and then pulls a whole other surprise out of its hat.  Another highly recommended read, but not for the faint of heart!]

Not to say that I loved everything about it - I thought the parts where she ends up romantically involved with Morozko were a distraction and unnecessary for her character.  She never seemed to need a romance, and I didn't really want one for her, even though there had been hints that way in earlier books.  Plus, since it has been awhile since I've read the first and second, the whole jewel storyline felt like it was very much built up in the first two books, both as a mystery and a plot point, but it seemed like it kind of fizzled into nothingness in the third.  I just feel like that was oddly unfinished, although maybe I just need to go back and re-read.

I can't help but compare this book to the Waking Lands books (unfairly perhaps) as how to write and plot well versus adequately. For example, in Waking Land, Elanna is beat up enough that she mentions pulling her shirt up and her ribs are black and blue.  Yet two pages later, she's riding a horse and jumping abruptly into the arms of her beloved whatshisname without even a passing thought to it.  In Winter of the Witch, Vasya gets the shit beat out of her, and she feels it for days, for weeks or months (time passes kind of weirdly for a while). It doesn't get forgotten in service of a cliche.

This trilogy as a whole is a wonderful deep dive into Russian folklore and feels like the best kind of fantasy: heavily and painstakingly plotted, not a thing out of place or out of character, and three books long.  Both the Winternight Trilogy and Naomi Novik's newest, Spinning Silver have rapidly replaced Orson Scott Card's Enchantment as my favorite psuedo-Russian fantasy (which definitely has some weird sexual issues that I enjoy less as I get older and wiser). 

This one I originally had down as my 2019 published book, but I'm switching this and Wicked King because I don't know what's in Wicked King but I feel like the domovoi creatures and the Firebird, for sure, better match the:

27: A book featuring an extinct or imaginary creature