Lost Voices

By Sarah Porter

Fourteen-year-old Luce has had a tough life, but she reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside of a grim, gray Alaskan fishing village. She expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waves below, but instead undergoes an astonishing transformation and becomes a mermaid. A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in—all of them, like her, lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives. Luce is thrilled with her new life until she discovers the catch: the mermaids feel an uncontrollable desire to drown seafarers, using their enchanted voices to lure ships into the rocks. Luce possesses an extraordinary singing talent, which makes her important to the tribe—she may even have a shot at becoming their queen. However her struggle to retain her humanity puts her at odds with her new friends. Will Luce be pressured into committing mass murder?
   The first book in a trilogy, Lost Voices is a captivating and wildly original tale about finding a voice, the healing power of friendship, and the strength it takes to forgive.

This book features a teaser chapter from Waking Storms, the sequel to this sensational debut novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9780547573823

Sarah Porter

Sarah Porter is the author of the young adult novels Lost Voices, Waking Storms, The Twice Lost, and Vassa in the Night. She is also an artist and a freelance public school teacher. Sarah and her husband live in Brooklyn, New York. Visit her online at www.sarahporterbooks.com.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Porter.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Harcourt, Inc., an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Excerpt from There There: Words and music by Thomas Edward Yorke, Philip James Selway, Edward John O’Brien, Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood, and Colin Charles Greenwood © 2003 Warner/Chappel Music Ltd (PRS).

All rights administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved.

Used by permission of Alfred Music Publishing Co., Inc.

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE.

LCCN: 2011008438

ISBN 978-0-547-48250-7 hardcover

ISBN 978-0-547-48253-8 paperback

eISBN 978-0-547-57382-3

v9.0718

For Maggie Cino,

who wandered with me on the beach, singing back to the mermaids

There’s always a siren singing you to shipwreck.

(Don’t reach out, don’t reach out, don’t reach out, don’t reach out.)

Steer away from these rocks, we’d be a walking disaster.

(Don’t reach out, don’t reach out, don’t reach out, don’t reach out.)

Radiohead, There There

1

Lost Voices

Lucette? Did you even hear the question?

Luce had been gazing out the window at the darkened sky sinking over the harbor still dotted with rough floating ice, the mountain walls of shadow-colored spruce and rusty boulders under the greenish, glassy dusk of a coming storm. Mr. Carroll’s voice jolted her back into the drab classroom with its tan desks and low scarred ceiling, and she noticed with dismay that half a dozen faces were already turning to stare into the back corner where she sat under a tattered map of the world. None of her other teachers ever called on her. Only Mr. Carroll insisted on trying to make her talk. If only he would leave her alone, Luce knew, the other kids would forget her existence completely.

She tightened her body and stared as blankly as she could at the board as the first giggles started up around her. Her stomach began to twist and her hands turned horribly cold. She squeezed them together under the desk to stop the trembling.

Lucette? You should be on page one twelve of your textbook. The third problem?

She was on page one hundred and twelve. She gaped down automatically at the third problem, and she was sure she knew the right answer. It was obvious.

The laughter got louder and faster. It buzzed around her like angry wasps. Mr. Carroll waved a hand to quiet everyone, but it didn’t have much effect. She hated the concern growing in his droopy gray eyes. Luce knew that the quickest way to make them all ignore her again would be just to answer the question. Parabolic. She opened her mouth to say the word.

Nothing came out except a kind of faint croak. Everyone could see her now, and almost all of them were giggling. Her hands were shaking so much that she had to sit on them.

Desperately Luce tried to force her voice to shape the word. Just one word and she would be free again.

Her croaking got a little louder. Most of the time she could talk as well as anyone, even if she almost always chose to keep quiet. Lately, though, her voice had developed a habit of abandoning her whenever she needed it most. Someone squealed and threw a wad of paper at her, clipping her on the side of her head.

That was enough to knock Mr. Carroll out of his trance. His wobbly eyes spun away from Luce. His huge round cheeks blushed scarlet, though there was no reason why he should feel embarrassed.

Amber? Mr. Carroll yelped, too loudly, to a girl sitting all the way at the front. It was almost a shout. It was as if he thought he could cancel out the ugliness of what he’d done, drawing all those eyes down on the skinny dark-haired girl who huddled in the back of his class, struggling with the loss of her voice.

"I have no idea what the answer is to this stupid problem, Mr. Carroll, Amber twittered in her happy voice. Nobody does except you." The shrieks of laughter that followed were strangely excited, and Mr. Carroll took advantage of the shifting mood, clowning as he worked out the problem on the blackboard. Even now he couldn’t leave it alone, though. He kept shooting Luce guilty looks, pinching his lips together, and of course everyone noticed. Every time he glanced her way, a few more pairs of eyes flocked after his. Luce kept her face down, drawing a thicket of black hatched lines in her book until the ink became so dense that hardly any white shone through.

When the bell finally rang Luce felt sicker than ever. The other students grabbed up their backpacks and raced out, eager to get to the cafeteria for lunch. Lunch. Where in that bright blocky room would she ever be able to hide? Mr. Carroll tried to catch her attention as she slipped past him, but Luce pretended not to notice.

This is, like, eighth grade already, a boy hissed in her ear. You act like some freaked-out ten-year-old. Luce kept her face blank and unresponsive, even when he prodded her arm.

She slunk after the other students, staying close to the walls. A crack of thunder smacked against her thoughts. It was terrifically loud. The lightning must have struck very close to the school.

Not today, Luce thought, and all at once she remembered the date again. Her stomach seethed, and she knew that the storm wouldn’t just blow over. She’d have to spend the afternoon watching the rain lash down outside and listening to the windowpanes clashing like cymbals in the wind. It would be exactly the way everything was a year ago today: the day her father’s boat hadn’t come home.

There was one good thing about the storm, anyway. It was a distraction. Kids huddled in the cafeteria, pretending to be terrified of the booming thunder, screaming and grabbing each other. The windows near the ceiling of the tall room looked almost black, and the rain rattled rock sharp against the panes. It was a small space compared to cafeterias Luce had seen before, but even with students bused in from every village within thirty miles it was always half empty. Lightning ripped through the darkness and the windows flashed blinding white and then went dark again. Everyone was too busy chattering about the violent weather to think of her. She slipped off to her usual spot at the side and sat alone with her back to everyone, and closed her eyes.

∗ ∗ ∗

It wasn’t a storm at all, then. Hot sunlight glared through the van’s open window and burned her cheeks. A bright golden blob of sun curled on her palm like a kitten. A sign flashing by outside welcomed them to Missouri. Her father laughed and gunned the motor.

"You know they just don’t make cops smart enough to catch up with me, don’t you, baby doll? Look at that. Over the state line already, and they still don’t know what hit them! She smiled back at him, shy as always, and he beamed at her and twisted a lock of her long hair around one finger. Then he squinched his lips and shot her a look. I mean, I guess I have to admit that maybe they could have caught me, once or twice—he drawled it out playfully, and Luce knew he was faking his reluctance—if I didn’t have you to help me with strategy. You’re my secret weapon, honey. You’ve got the mind of a great general. And not a one of them ever suspects it. Luce was already giggling when her father launched into the sluggish, moronic voice he always used to mimic policemen and judges. You don’t mean to say that that sweet little wisp of a thing could be the diabolical mastermind behind this incredible theft, do you? No, I’ll never believe it!"

Luce knew he was only kidding. About the most she ever did to help was to stand lookout while her father loaded stolen chemicals or electronics into the back of their van. Even so, she loved hearing him say it. "You and me, we’ve got them all fooled, don’t we? Now, as soon as we hit St. Louis I’ll take you to the best bookstore in town, and you can pick out a whole damn stack. And for a hot fudge sundae. You’ve most certainly earned your share of the spoils."

Luce’s bare feet were already propped high on piles of books and the duffle bag holding her clothes. Her gawky knees poked up in front of the dashboard. She could feel her right leg starting to get sunburned, but she didn’t bother moving it. The rest of the van was stuffed with the weird-looking lumps of equipment her father had swiped from his last temporary job, this one doing maintenance work in a huge dry cleaning plant. Even the wind swirling across the front seat couldn’t completely get rid of the sharp chemical stink. Sometimes her father wrinkled his nose into a ridiculous doglike snout and then gave her a sideways grin to let her know the smell bothered him, too.

The smell changed in Luce’s nose. Now it was the greasy stench of Tater Tots and gluey fried chicken. That moment in the van had happened almost three years before, and the memory suddenly seemed stale and cold, as if she had used it to comfort herself one too many times. Her eyes were still shut tight, but she knew that if she opened them she wouldn’t see the bright sunshine on the highway anymore.

Come back come back come back, Luce called silently to her father. She tried to make the words powerful and wild, so that he would hear them wherever he was. It’s been a whole year! There was no answer. Just the giddy shouting of the kids roughhousing at the tables behind her and the piercing soprano of a teacher who was screaming at them. Luce kept arguing with her father anyway. It’s my birthday tomorrow. You can’t miss it twice in a row!

It didn’t work. She couldn’t see anything but the dark red insides of her eyelids. She was all alone in this horrible school, with no place to go but back to her uncle’s tiny brown clapboard house two miles outside of town. She could disappear into the woods on days when it wasn’t raining too hard, but that carried its own risks. Her uncle tended to get irritable if he didn’t find her at home, and after a few drinks he might express his irritation by slamming her into a wall.

When the bell rang again, she realized that she hadn’t touched her food.

∗ ∗ ∗

After lunch the storm turned so violent that the kids stopped joking about it. It was just like last year. Some of them had fathers out on the sea, and with the weather this ferocious there was always a chance that not all the boats would make it back home. Even the teachers seemed nervous. The thunder boomed, and the fluorescent lights looked dim and sick. No one was all that surprised when, halfway through seventh period, there was a shattering burst of lightning and the power went out completely. Kids shrieked and banged into desks in the darkness. Mrs. Dougherty yelled for quiet, but she sounded so hysterical herself that no one paid any attention to her. Luce sat tight at the back of the room, and in the faint greenish light coming in through the windows she could see the tumult of kids fighting to get to the door. A girl named Crystal got knocked down, hit her head on the wastebasket, and started sobbing.

Luce stayed where she was, listening to something she could hear under Crystal’s sobs; there was a new kind of silence, prickly with expectation. But what did she think was going to happen?

Then the door swung open, and the beam of a flashlight streaked across the room. Mr. Carroll, again. Everyone, please, form a line. We don’t need to make things any worse. One line, that’s right. We have emergency lighting working in the cafeteria. Once everyone’s quiet I’ll lead you there. The buses will be coming in a few minutes to take you home. His voice was steady, and the students finally started calming down. Luce wanted to stay where she was, but she knew it would only attract attention if she didn’t move. Reluctantly she stood and gathered her books while Mr. Carroll helped Crystal off the floor. Are you all right, Crystal? Do you need to see the nurse? Suddenly Luce knew that Crystal wasn’t crying because of her head.

What about the boats? Crystal was barely whispering, but somehow Luce heard her anyway. The flashlight was pointing toward the windows, and Mr. Carroll’s face was too dark to see. But when he spoke his voice was very soft.

Well, the last news we had was half an hour ago. But the word then was that all the boats were just fine. Don’t worry. They’re all heading home.

Luce knew the idea that came to her then was childish, but she couldn’t completely suppress it and her heart started pounding. She pictured the boats sliding into the harbor, and following behind them was an extra, unaccountable boat, so battered and patched that it looked almost ghostly behind the gray veils of the rain. Everyone would scream in amazement when they recognized the High and Mighty returning after a whole year lost, maybe having been trapped in the ice somewhere, where the men had survived by hunting seals and fishing . . .

You should know better than to fret when I’m late, honey, her father said in her thoughts. Life has a way of turning crazy on me sometimes. But you know I come back just as soon as I can.

Luce nodded in her mind, trying to drown out the suspicion that this was just a cowardly way of avoiding the truth. After all, he’d come back before. When she was eight he’d been sent to jail for a while—something to do with writing checks that didn’t belong to him—and she’d gone into foster care. But then on her ninth birthday the faded red van was waiting outside her school, and she’d looked up to see him grinning at her through the open door. They couldn’t go back to Texas after that because the police thought her father had kidnapped her. That hadn’t made any sense to Luce; how could you kidnap your own daughter? After a while he’d stopped trying to explain. Just put it down as one of those things that don’t make good sense, doll, he’d told her. Lord knows there are plenty more where that came from.

It seemed like a very long time before the students were finally lined up and sent out to the waiting buses. Too long and too quiet, without any of the fights and shrieks there’d been during lunch. The storm boomed louder than ever. Outside, the raindrops popped all over the sidewalk in tiny bright explosions. Even in the heavy rain she preferred to walk home; anything to keep away from those stares. Below her was the harbor, the high trembling sea, while on either side rags of mountains dense with rain-blackened spruce jarred steeply upward, their darkness giving way to spills of cold, white ice halfway up. Cinnamon-colored rock outlined each base. It was early April, and the brutal darkness of the winter had yielded to days almost as long as the nights, but even so, the days were white or deep gray, rain-slashed and somber. Luce had lived in Alaska for only the past fifteen months, and she still wasn’t used to any of it: the pale summer nights, winter days where the air seemed to be permeated with coal dust, the endless cold, the antlered shadows of huge elk suddenly appearing in the middle of the roads. Everyone said it had been an unusually warm winter, and Luce could barely imagine how that could be true. She stopped for a while at the edge of the cliffs, feeling the icy rivulets coiling around the side of her neck and inside her jacket while she gazed at the seethe and dip of the waves far below. Ice floes still jostled each other in places. To Luce they looked like greenish sheep nosing through the water.

By the time she got home every power line in the village seemed to have been knocked out. She sat in the small pea green kitchen, her feet on the patch of raw wood where the linoleum had peeled away. There was a good chance her uncle Peter would stay away until early morning, she knew; the anniversary of his brother’s disappearance was a perfect excuse to go out drinking, and her uncle wouldn’t want to pass it up. She ate crackers with peanut butter and read by candlelight until she fell asleep with her head on her arms.

∗ ∗ ∗

What woke her wasn’t a knock. It was more of a flapping noise at the kitchen door, wet and sloppy. Luce jerked awake and listened. The candle had gone out. All around her the house was dead quiet, apart from the thrashing of the waves outside. Even the rain had stopped now, and the windows were dark gray with early dawn. She knew at once that her uncle hadn’t come home. And she knew that she’d better keep out of his way when he did. Anytime he stayed out this late it meant he’d be coming home roaring drunk.

The flapping noise came again, and now Luce was awake enough to recognize the sound. Gum! Luce called in relief. She ran to let him in. He was squeezed up under the door frame, his shapeless little face bright and anxious. Cold wind rushed through the open door. You know it’s my birthday, Gum? I’m fourteen. He cooed in a way that made her think he understood her, and she smiled at him. It was as close as she was going to get to hearing happy birthday from anyone.

Luce didn’t know if it made sense to call Gum her friend, exactly, when he was more than three years younger than she was and what they called mentally disabled. He could barely talk. At least he couldn’t seem to say anything that made sense. He spoke in a mixture of gibberish and seagullish moans. But she felt safe with him, and she knew he was always happy to see her, too. His pale silky hair swirled in the wind as he clung to the door frame. Gum’s mother was still alive, unlike Luce’s, but his father was long gone. His mother struck Luce as coarse and venomous, but then in her opinion most adults were. She couldn’t understand why all the kids she knew were in such a hurry to turn into them. People whispered horrible things about how Gum’s mother treated him, and it wasn’t too unusual for him to turn up at strange hours like this.

He bounced on the balls of his feet and hopped back from the door, flapping his hand at her. She hesitated for only a second. It would probably be better if her uncle Peter came home to an empty house. He’d be angry, of course, if he checked her room and she wasn’t there. But then he’d fall asleep, and by the time he woke up he’d definitely have forgotten all about it. Luce looked into Gum’s shining eyes and sighed.

Hold on while I get my jacket, okay? Gum bobbled and trilled on the grass. Behind him she could see the slow roll of the meadow breaking off suddenly where the cliffs plunged down into the crashing waves. The sea was still wild from the storm, and even from here she could see how the waves arched high into the bitter air before they fell like toppling buildings. Luce shivered.

Gum couldn’t stop squeaking as she tied her sneakers and squeezed into her old silvery down jacket. She’d grown so much in the past year that the sleeves ended halfway up her forearms, but she could still get it to zip as long as she didn’t wear a sweater. She took Gum’s clammy hand in hers so he wouldn’t fall, and they walked down the path that traveled along the top of the cliff. On their other side white wooden staircases zigzagged steeply upward through the darkness of the spruce, heading to tiny-windowed board houses tucked among the trees. Cold and dark as the morning was, Luce felt her heart leap with happiness as she felt the sweet, free wind rush across her face. If she hadn’t had to worry about Gum tumbling off the edge she would have started to run.

A hundred yards from her uncle’s house there was an incline where, by half clambering and half sliding, they could get down to a broad pebble beach at the bottom of the rocks. Tiny avalanches skittered away under their feet, and when Gum almost lost his footing Luce made him sit down and slide with her until they reached the spot where a tangle of dead roots gave them a handhold. Luce jumped the last two feet onto the pebbles, then turned and caught Gum in her arms to help him down. The tide was about as low as it could go, which was a good thing, because the waves were enormous. Luce couldn’t help feeling anxious as she looked at those iron gray walls of water and the strange lace patterns of the foam where they crashed and slid back. Any one of those waves could easily pick her up and sweep her far away. Then no one would ever see her again. The idea was frightening, but what scared her even more was that, if she was honest with herself, she was horribly attracted by the idea of drifting away with the sea.

Gum! He was eager to run off to the tide pools, and she had to catch him back and grab his head to make him look at her. The morning was a little brighter now. Gum’s face was glossy with mist and it shone in the silver light. "Gum, you need to stay way back from the water today, okay? You understand me?" Adults never got tired of warning them how dangerous the sea was here, how fast and unpredictable the currents could be. It wasn’t even safe to wade. Just last fall a fifth grade boy had been grabbed right off the rocks by a rogue wave. He’d vanished while his friends watched helplessly, and two weeks later some fishermen had found his body in their net.

Gum squeaked and ran a few steps, then turned and hopped in place, obviously daring her to chase him. He spun around and leaped along, pounding deep hollows in the pebble beach. Luce ran after him, but she went at a deliberately lazy pace, giving him the thrill of outrunning her. She’d put on more speed later, catch him suddenly and swing him through the air. But then he veered down the steep slope of the beach: not all that close to the water, really, but close enough to make Luce nervous.

You promised to stay back! Luce called after him. He showed he understood her by shooting a sheepish look over his shoulder and thumping clumsily back up the grade, flopping onto one knee before he scrambled up again.

The wind cried in her ears, its whistle curling wildly up the scale. There was something disturbing in the sound of it, Luce thought: a very subtle undertone, like a voice drifting from the far side of the earth. It was too alluring, too sweet, as if that vast oblivious expanse was calling her to join it. Vaguely Luce felt the percussion in her own legs as she stepped closer to the sea. A tongue of water drenched her sneakers, so icy it stung, and Luce started.

What had she been thinking? It was terribly irresponsible to let herself space out like that while Gum raced on alone. The wind was just wind. That was obvious now. There was nothing unusual about it.

She went after him, calling his name, but he had a good start on her. He was already almost to the cliffs that closed off the far end of the beach. There were tall spiky rocks sticking out of the beach down there, forming a kind of maze, and as Luce ran, Gum dashed behind a rock and disappeared. The pebbles rattled under Luce’s pounding feet and the cold wind slapped at her face.

Gum? she called. She’d finally reached the place where she’d seen him duck behind the rocks, but he was nowhere in sight. "Where are you?" There were round dents in the smooth beach that showed the way he’d run, and she followed them, weaving between huge crags. The waves crashed in a little closer now. The tide was coming in. If she didn’t find him soon they’d both be in danger.

Gum, it’s time to stop playing like this! You need to get back here. Then she heard a soft sobbing sound, and turned a corner. Gum was curled in a tight ball, bobbing on his toes and crying. She couldn’t see his face. A huge clump of wet brown seaweed spread out in front of him.

Luce crouched beside him and gently put her arm around his shoulders. The waves were getting much too close, and she had

Reviews for Lost Voices

[carol420 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Anyone that thinks of mermaids as gentle sweet creatures will have an awakening experience after reading this book. Dark is an adjective that doesn't even begin to touch on describing it. "Foreboding" and "deliciously creepy" comes very close for us that are dyed in the wool horror fans. The whole idea is that Mermaids are young women who are being given a second chance after being hurt and tortured by human beings. Every girl mermaid Luce meets has her own horror story of how she got there...and they are indeed horrible. The things that I thought really mattered to help in understanding this story wasn't explained in this book...but may be explained in the later books... was exactly what are the "Mermaid Rules"...Who make these rules...how are they enforced...and who enforces them. The reader may not want to really learn the answers. This story is an intriguing and unusual play on the mermaid myth and it will leave you wanting to be much nicer to everyone you come in contact with.

[heatherlinc · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I quite enjoyed this novel about a dark mermaid community but there were some fairly mature themes in it. Parts of the book had me hooked while other aspects annoyed me. I liked how the mermaids were created, brought to the water after traumatic deaths and I also liked the imagery the author used, which was really quite haunting. However, the pacing wasn't right at times and there were too many characters to keep up with. In "Lost Voices" Porter has certainly portrayed mermaids in a totally, different light. The girls were quite evil and some of the things they did throughout the book were fairly horrific. Overall, a good read, but many questions were left unanswered.

[elizabeth1929-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow, that was better than I thought...now I can't wait wait to read the next one...

[ceilidhann · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Sometime after Stephenie Meyer’s “Breaking Dawn” was unleashed upon the world and the media was scrambling for the next big creature in YA, mermaids was tossed around as a possible substitute for vampires and werewolves, partly influenced by Meyer herself admitting to having a mermaid story in mind for a future novel. While this hypothesised craze never really came to fruition, there is a number of mermaid-related YA stories awaiting release or already in bookshops from the past year or so.

Sarah Porter’s debut, yet another first in a series, takes the mermaid mythos that has more in common with Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” than the incredibly sanitised Disney adaptation. While the mermaid and siren tradition has a rich and fascinating mythos, it’s not one that’s been explored very often in YA and Porter’s reinterpretation of themes from The Odyssey along with fairy tales of both Andersen and the Grimm Brothers is one of the strongest elements of the book. The story is unrelentingly bleak for the most part – girls are turned into mermaids after having suffered unimaginable abuse and pain at the hands of humans to the point where they give up on humanity. The mermaids live in a matriarchal society and use their siren-like voices to crash ships and kill those on board as a form of revenge for what humanity did to them. It definitely made a refreshing change from the stock paranormal format that has oversaturated the market.

Most of my problems with the book fall at the feet – or tail – of the protagonist Luce. She has a standard neglected orphan set-up which just manages to avoid falling into maudlin soap-opera territory (only just), and she does have some interesting moments, especially in her complex relationship with head mermaid Catarina. However, she veers from naive little girl to tortured hero with a passive martyr complex. I think most of these problems are the result of Porter’s prose, which is often clunky and repetitious but reasonably serviceable for the most part, except with Luce’s internal monologue. Her characterisation has a lot of potential – her coming to terms with what happened to her, discovering her new powers, wanting to fit in and stick to the mermaid code but still having her humanity – but it felt a little black and white at times, especially since practically none of the other mermaids had these issues. By the end of it all, Luce is the super special mermaid to end all super special mermaids and it’s so overdone. I was much more intrigued by Catarina’s story but Porter tries to introduce far too many characters so nobody is really given any time to truly develop beyond being abused girls turned vengeful mermaids. Most of the time it’s hard to remember which one is which since their personalities are so similar that they end up merging together. Things aren’t helped when even more characters are introduced with even less development. If you’re going to use something like abuse as a developmental point in a character’s life, you’d better make sure you do it well for fear of coming across as lazy and exploitative. In this case it’s more the former.

The plot is so deathly slow I didn’t think there was one for the most part. I understand Porter wanting to develop the mermaid way of life, and there is a lot of often repeated detail in this book, but it plods along at such a snail’s pace that I found myself getting bored on more than one occasion. Things pick up towards the end but you can’t just rush a plot 2/3s of the way through to make up for the rest of the book. Many interesting questions are raised, especially pertaining to the mermaids’ powers and their own twisted version of judgement, but few are answered. It’s a world that never truly reaches its potential.

If mermaids are to be the new creatures that fill our paranormal YAs in the future then I hope their worlds are at least as interesting as the one in “Lost Voices”. The mythos is clearly begging for some interesting interpretations and Porter gives us one that is bleak, complex and brimming with possibilities, which I hope it fulfils with the rest of the series. However, the plotting needs some serious work as does the characterisation of the supporting cast. There is definitely potential for Porter to develop and grow as a writer which will drastically improve the series but as this book stands, it’s not without merit but I was left with too many questions and too many problems.

2.5/5.

[ccathee17c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

OMG! Awesome book!

[a_reader_of_fictions · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lost Voices reminds me a bit of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, only with a crazy paranormal bent and less focus. The story never really seemed quite to resolve into a plot. I suspect this may mean there is a sequel in the works, which would explain why so many things were brought up and then dropped by the seaside.

Porter's explanation of how mermaids come about and why they sink ships was certainly an intriguing one. Abused girls turn into mermaids and then punish the humans who did such awful things to them. To do this, they are gifted with otherworldly voices and beauty, which lure the humans to their deaths.

If this book had been a bit different, I think I might have liked it. The writing was pretty good and, even though I was not particularly into the story, it still moves along at a nice pace. However, the story focused primarily on the weird mermaid society, on their codes and how all of them secretly break them. Basically, it showed how terrifying a sisterhood is and how much fun it is to sing. I would have preferred a Speak-like focus on issues of child abuse or a fantasy romance that considered the possibility of the existence of mermen or an ethical tale that really evaluated their life choices. Lost Voices touches on all of these, but does not really go into any sort of satisfying detail.

The book is odd too, in that it would seem to attract a younger crowd, given the age of the heroine and the almost complete lack of romance. Yet, the issues and the tone of desolation would seem to suggest it is for older readers. Lost Voices is about as happy and sweet as the killer unicorn books by Diana Peterfreund, only not, for me, as good.

To sum up, I didn't hate this, nor did I like it particularly. It raises some interesting issues and I certainly recommend it to those who like YA paranormal, but are sick of the romances.

[sunshinejenn03 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

With a cover like this, who wouldn't have big expectations (I MEAN, LOOK AT IT!)? The cover for Lost Voices promises a sort of fairy tale, magic, and girlish innocent youth.

It doesn't deliver.

Lost Voices by Sarah Porter is the story of Luce, formerly a human who transforms into a mermaid with a beautiful, deadly singing voice. On the night of her transformation, she's found by the mermaid tribe Queen, Catarina, who brings her back to the other girls, where they teach her the whys and the ways of becoming a mermaid. Seemingly, most of the mermaids have lost their humanity - fitting since they are no longer human. The way to become a mermaid is rather simple: have something really awful done to you and accept that there is nothing left for you in your human world. Your body liquifies, and reforms as a mermaid. If you aren't near a coast, travel through sewage pipes and drain pipes until you reach a body of salt water.
Because the way to become a mermaid is through negative experiences, the mermaids hate humans, regardless of having been human once themselves. They use their beautiful, deadly voices to lure and sink ships, for no other reason than entertainment and vengeance.
The premise of Lost Voices is great. It is the stuff out of sadistic fairy tales. But the execution of Lost Voices fails miserably. The story meanders often, with no real thought to plot lines and story arcs, leaving the reader wondering exactly where it's going or when it will start getting interesting. None of the characters are all that vibrant - save the most hated character, Anais, who is so profoundly vapid and cruel, she becomes interesting by virtue of that alone. The story feels very two-dimensional and flat, exactly the opposite of the world it is trying to describe. And though Lost Voices is the first in a mermaid trilogy, the ending is both abrupt and trailing off, of a sort. It just...ends. When it ended, I found myself wondering where the author was trying to take me, and if she really wanted me to read the next book.
I can confidently say I won't be.

[connie4sung · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book stats out with Luce, an abused girl who lives with her horrible uncle. After an "accident" with a ship, her father dies, and her mother died before the dad did. Where the story really begins is right after her uncle raped her after a "couple of sips" (if you know what I mean...). Then you find out that all the abused girls in the world, if lonely enough, turns into a mermaid. Catarina, the queen of a mermaid tribe explains to Luce about being a mermaid, and part of it is commiting mass murder by shipwrecked via voices (think Sirens). After living (and appreciating) with the mermaids, a new one appears, this one named Anais (Inuit name or Egyptian? Who knows?) who has a dark agenda. After messing with everyone and getting a few followers/might-as-well-be-called-servants, she basically steals from the dead people on shipwrecks (liquor, clothes, etc.). After the mermaids get into a drunken state, they caught Catarina breaking the timahk (basically a mermaid code of chivalry: help mermaids in trouble, never hit them, never contact a human, that kind of thing) and beat her out (so basically ALL the mermaids by the end of it broke the timahk, including Luce.I think the book is good, but not the best that I've read. Some of the characters make stupid mistakes, and think for the wrong things. Like Catarina COMEPLETLEY got out of character just because Luce was practicing her sing by herself. Sure she still wants to be queen, but I think that Luce showed that she was loyal to her. Luce was also kind of a problem. I mean, she could've stayed still instead of going to a ship, and they would be safe and sound without there literally being a problem (as in NO storyline. Guess that was the point). What also gets on my nerves are the levels of appreciation that Luce gets, like she saved a girl named Jenna, and let her get a home, and her only thanks is *glare, secretly HUGE hating issues at Luce inside her*. The couple things I liked about the book was it's level of irony, like with the ending, Luce turns into a mermaid because of her drunken uncle raping her, and ends up being driven out by the mermaids that took her in because they were drunk. Luce was also an interesting character, and most of her self-esteem issues, being a little less than brave (that, or suicidally brave, like diving into a killer whale to save another lavae, which is good), and that she's still modest even after her powerful singing becomes a plot/fight issue. All in all, she acts kind of like an abused person (that's what I'm guessing at least).

[pocketmermaid · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

EXTREMELY disappointing and boring book. I should have stopped reading it. The premise was so promising - girls who have been abused and assaulted as humans find new life as mermaids. This book should have been haunting and disturbing, and it was neither. Luce, the main character, was annoying and a coward. I couldn't stand her, let alone give a crap about what happened to her.I love love love mermaid books. But not this one. This one was a huge, irredeemable waste of time.

[vykic37 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Find this review and more at On The Shelf!This book was immensely well-written with superb descriptions, making for a very vivid image in my mind’s eye. The author has made a beautiful scene of an Alaskan beach and wonderful sea and sunset images, very lovely. She also had put a creative twist on a mermaid tale. Girls do not undergo normal transformations into mermaids, and it takes something very traumatic to get them to change. This novel may be outside of some people’s comfort zones because of the traumatic experiences that led up to the girls’ transformations. There are also the little “larva mermaids” that are ill-treated. The story is not a very happy one; there are many dark moments and death all around. Luce wants so badly to belong, but she questions often whether she should be with this group of mermaids. I liked how different Luce was from the rest of the mermaids and how she still held on to her strong conscience even after everything that happened to her. The author wrote very strong characters, including a couple that brought up very loathful feelings (I hated Anais). This was certainly not your typical boy meets girl, instant attraction, get over dilemmas, everything turns out peachy kind of YA novel. There are several issues, including death, greed, and power hungry people, plus there is no romance what so ever. This novel is darker, more complex and deeper than most YA novels. So if you want something that has many layers to it, then this book may be for you. It may have gotten a 4 from me, had it been a little faster-paced. I’m not crazy about slower books; makes me feel like I’m reading slower than I should be. But, all in all it was an enjoyable novel and I will be reading the sequel to know what will happen with the tribe and Luce.Beautiful descriptions, imaginative, on the slower side, no romance.

[thelostentwife · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

With all the stories of vampires, werewolves, angels, demons and witches/warlocks out there - of course the time of the mermaid was bound to come. I've read a few mermaid novels in the past year or so, and Lost Voices has to be the best of the bunch, but that said, it still lacks that extra umph I was hoping for.Sarah Porter does a beautiful job with crafting a thought-out version of mermaid lore. Gone are the beautiful mermaids in The Little Mermaid a la Disney and, instead, here are mermaids that are more like the ones in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie.How do they get that way?Through intense pain and struggle. Each of the mermaids in this tribe has been abused and now they have formed a band of beautiful girls living under the ocean waters. But for Luce, there's an issue. She cannot bring herself to hate mankind because of the love she had for her father.Oh, and there is a lot of singing.The singing is actually what made the book for me. Sarah Porter did a beautiful job describing the sounds, the practice and the results of the songs. The scenes in which the mermaids sing are exquisitely written and I loved them so very much - but they made the dialogue and the juvenile descriptions of the girls interaction that much more painful. Overall, the book seemed to be a jumbled bit of a mess, background stories tossed in here and there when absolutely necessary, an entire group of girls brought into the story for.. what purpose, I'm not sure. A Queen Bitch added in and a struggle between Luce and her "best" friend that switched around so often I felt like I was getting whiplash just from reading it.I don't know if I'll pick up the book to follow this one (and it's plainly obvious there will be another). If I do, it'd just be to see if the writing has improved on the character interaction level. I know Porter is capable of doing it - those musical passages in the book really did leave me breathless.

[bookswithbite · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really love mermaid stories and when I read the back of the book it captured me. Mostly cause the storyline was different then what I see around. And this book was different yet it did run along the same lines as other mermaid stories.The characters in this book I really like. They were all the same as in the burden that they carried as a a human. I really like the old tale of how they become mermaids. It gave a an interesting twist on the story all together. Luce has been through so much. I adored her stealth and wittiness. She was different but didn't flaunt it. She just wanted to live a happy normal life for once. One thing that really grabbed me about her was her ways of finding out things. Even when she was sneaking around looking for answers, she never gave to much of herself away. She was always once step ahead of everyone.One thing that really grabbed me about this book was that there was no love interest. These girls or rather mermaids, their tale of surviving and what they went through was enough to hold the reader. They had to come to the conclusions if what they were doing was right. Do they seek forgiveness and let it go or do they allow humans to pay for the past things that was done to them? What these mermaids come to find is that there anger has caused more pain then what they know.

[c5ibarra · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Luce is forced to live with her alcoholic uncle when her father's fishing boat is lost at sea. On one of her outings she finds the body of a young girl on the beach and risks her life to get to her. When her uncle hears of her exploits things take a terrible turn, and Luce finds herself falling from a cliff. She wakes in the ocean with a tail surround by other abused girls who have been given a second chance in the sea. Initially she is happy to have mermaid friends and feel like she has somewhere she belongs. When the truth of how the mermaids seek revenge on the humans that hurt them becomes clear, Luce finds herself fighting her newly acquired instincts. I really wanted to love this book. Unfortunately, I had difficulty connecting with main character, Luce. The plot also moved at a pace I found slow and difficult to work through. I did find the writing beautifully descriptive until a new character was introduced later in the book. She seemed to bring so much slang to the mermaid's world. It was a distraction from the stunning descriptions of the world they inhabited that composed the first portion of the book. At that point things also got a little angsty for my liking, and made the entire tone of the book seem to change. I truly appreciated the message the author was trying to convey. I found the idea of abused girls becoming mermaids fascinating. Made me think of the Lost Boys in Neverland. I did find the mermaids strong blood lust when it came to humans a little disturbing. The cover definitely leads you to believe something more whimsical inhabits the pages of Lost Voices. I'm usually a fan of the dark and edgy tale, but this one didn't win me over. It was like so much was happening, but yet nothing was happening at all. I think the overwhelmingly large cast of characters may have been at fault. Still an OK start, and I'll probably pick up the next book in this trilogy because the ending of Lost Voices was so abrupt. A serious lack of the closure I needed. Given my curious nature I have to know what happens next.

[kmartin802_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This story had beautiful visual language and a heartbreaking story. Lost, abused, mistreated young girls turn into mermaids who lure those on ships to their deaths. Luce was almost raped by her uncle before she became a mermaid but she doesn't hate all humans because she remembers her father's love. She makes friends and tries to learn to sing a song that won't kill but Anais joins the group and brings evil to it.

[absconditas · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The author did a really good job with the concept, and character development and painted a beautiful picture of the beautiful, and often times savagery of the mermaids. In this vengeful story, mermaids are made, rather than born . Its foreboding melodious lull swept me into the world of these killer mermaid girls. Luce. I hated her. She was just so.. pitiful. Her father and mother are dead, she doesn’t fit in as a human or a mermaid for that matter, and her uncle is an abusive alcoholic. After drinking himself into a stupor in the local tavern one night, he brutally attacks Luce, mistaking her for her mother and she falls from a cliff. But, instead of dying, she turns into a mermaid. The mermaids that inhabit the sea are not of the sugary, cutesy, dolled-up versions that Disney has fed us our whole lives. In this story, they are vindictive, and malicious, hating the humans for what they had done to them during their lives as mortals, so what do they do? They sing. and their song leads sailors to their death, and the mermaids described in this story take great pleasure in this. Lost Voices addressed a lot of issues such as abuse, redemption, forgiveness, and friendship, which was honestly what saved it for me. The relationships described in this book were heartbreakingly real and really hits home. Oh, and plus it’s prefaced with a Radiohead song.

[bolgai · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Luce is used to being the new kid in school and to her books being her only friends. She's even used to avoiding her drunk abusive uncle. One day though his abuse goes too far and Luce lets go of her humanity. When she wakes up she is a mermaid, part of a tribe, and has the most beautiful and powerful voice of them all. Too bad mermaids take lives with their voices. I haven't read a mermaid story since H.C. Andersen's Little Mermaid and seeing this book on NetGalley decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did. Luce is an avid reader so while the story is definitely YA the vocabulary isn't simplistic but still feels natural, without the effect of thesaurus overuse. I really liked the narrative voice for how lyrical and visual it is. Singing is a very important part of the bulk of this book and Ms. Porter did a wonderful job describing the mermaids' singing in a way that wasn't flat or confusing. I actually felt like I knew exactly what their songs sounded like and could understand the almost physical nature of the songs. There's a stark contrast between the beauty of the mermaids, the world they live in, the exhilaration of their strength and speed, the magic of their voices and the reason why they are all there. It's very dark, actually, because they are all teenagers, the oldest is only 16, but they've all lived a life of pain and abuse and when it all became too much they left the human world but didn't really die. I enjoyed having the weight of this fact to balance the general immaturity of the mermaids, it helped give depth to the story that otherwise could have felt too much like "mean girls gone wild", especially in the second half of the book. There is also the interesting concept that the girls who had no voice in their human lives, were never heard and always disregarded now had voices that could not be ignored. Lost Voices is the first in a trilogy and it is the beginning of what I think will be a theme arc of coming to terms with who you are, learning to take control of your life, forgiving past hurts and friendship and it's good to know that this book is only the beginning because the way it ended was a bit confusing to me. It was so abrupt that for a moment I thought that I received an incomplete file but the more I thought about the ending after I confirmed that the file was indeed complete the more it made sense. The external conflict here was so strong and volatile that I've almost forgotten all about the importance of the internal conflict while it is the internal conflict that pushed the story forward from the very beginning. Throughout the book Luce struggled with having become a mermaid and signing ships to their death, she struggled with the power of her voice and with the fact that her father most likely died because of mermaids but in the end she comes to appreciate her new world and the beauty of it, she is determined to choose her destiny and grows up just enough to take on the out of control mermaids in the next book. At least I hope she'll take them on because with Anais at the helm those girls have most definitely gone wild. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy fantasy YA, mermaids and don't mind a protagonist who's not a lara croft type. ARC of this book was obtained through NetGalley.com

[rachybee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I’m honestly unsure how to write my review of this book. First, this is the first mermaid tale I’ve ever read and going into it I was very excited, however this story is actually a real disappointment in my eyes. The writing itself is fabulous. The author weave every word together beautifully and she has a unique take on how mermaids were created, yet I feel she didn't go into enough detail to explain how this occurrence actually happened. What someone was mistreated and then poof....they became a mermaid? Sorry not enough for me—I would have liked a deeper explanation. I did like the plot line of this story for the most part and this is the main reason I continued reading the book. The mermaids in this book were very much siren-like—singing to ships and hedging sailors and people in general to their deaths. Young, old, innocent, guilty-- they were all the same in the tribe’s eyes and no one was spared. It was very hard for me to push aside what they did throughout the book because as far as I was concerned, it was murder. The things that were done to each one of these mermaids during their human lives were horrendous, but that was in no way an excuse for them to do what they did. Just because one person is cruel and horrible, doesn’t mean they all are. I’m sorry, but Luce was just as horrible main character. Yes, she was young and she’d been treated horribly but she was weak and winey and pathetic. I understand that as a reader we’re supposed to emphasise with how she’s written, but it was just near impossible for me. She was willing to brush aside too much of her humanity to fit in with this new crowd. Luce was willing to sit back and watch something that she knew and felt was wrong simply because she didn’t want to be ostracised. It was ridiculous how all of the mermaids acted really, they were vain and shallow and idiotic. They looked at things in twisted ways and I disliked Luce more and more for her need to fit in and be one of them. even when she did something right and stood up for each and everyone one of them, they still treated her cruelly and the fact that she let that happen time and time again made it impossible for me to respect her. The ending of this book was very abrupt and I actually kept trying to scroll down, trying to see if there was more to this story, but alas there isn’t. I do wonder what the author has in store for a sequel, but considering how little I liked this I doubt I’ll read it....

[mee503 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Throughout this book I had mixed feelings on where it was headed and what I thought of it.In the end I found the story to be a combination of many different feelings from sympathetic, heartbreaking,irritating and just plane pissed me off at points. I guess I expected more from Luce and the other girls than I found at points in the story but after all they are only human...Kinda! That being said I enjoyed this book. The idea that such tragedy can turn young girls into mermaids is interesting. I look forward to seeing where Sara takes these girls and their story's.I recommend this book with 3.5 stars

[doskoipanda · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'll begin this by saying that I have had an interest in mermaids for as long as I can remember, probably stemming from Barrie's "Peter Pan" and strengthened by the references in T.S. Elliot's "Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock." And then again, they appear in Greek mythology as the sirens, luring sailors to their watery graves with their enchanted, bewitching songs and let's not forget the fairytale of the Little Mermaid, and Disney's sanitized film version. Jack Dann produced an anthology of mermaid tales in the 1980s (Mermaids!) that had some tremendous stories. But rarely is the subject of origin addressed; mermaids seem to have simply existed. Some stories focus on their beauty, and their pain at being unable to join the human world, others demonize them in the way that does no credit to either side of the water's surface. But Sarah Porter's "Lost Voices" takes a slightly different tack - she tries to get inside their heads.The story begins with Luce, who has been orphaned at the death of her father (he died before the novel begins, lost at sea as he worked on a fishing boat) and is now living with her uncle in a small seaside village. Luce is picked on for being different, and generally tries to minimize her presence. Her uncle, angry with his dead brother for 1) having stolen his girlfriend (Luce's mother), 2) for having "allowed" her to die due to his con artist's lifestyle and 3) for dying and saddling him with Luce, gets drunk and takes out his anger on Luce, molesting and nearly killing her. Luce decides that it's only a matter of time before it happens again, and that it would be likely to get worse as she grew older, decides to die, and plummets into the icy waters. Except she doesn't die, instead, she surrenders her humanity and becomes a mermaid.Sarah Porter's mermaids have more in common with the sirens of Greek mythology, or the strangely cruel mermaids in Barrie's Peter Pan than Disney's Little Mermaid, Ariel. There is no kingdom under the sea, no comforting sea king to call papa. But there are other mermaids, other girls whose lives were so miserable from abuse, neglect or abandonment that they, too, rejected humanity. There are rules - mermaid laws and traditions made to protect the tribe- and there is work, of sorts, to use their voices to sing ships to the rocks and kill all the humans aboard by compelling them to jump into the icy depths. Luce is horrified by this aspect of what she has become and struggles against the compulsion to join in when her new friends attack ships. Luce's struggle to maintain something of her humanity/something of her own will and morality intensifies as more newly reborn mermaids join the tribe, and the tribe splinters into factions.I really, really liked the book - it has a few problems, but most early novels have a few rough patches. The language is in that difficult middle ground that pops up in books for young adults, sometimes seeming too simple, and other times complex. The old lady in me has reservations about some of the subject matter being possibly too mature for younger readers, but at the same time the violence is considerably less than in the Harry Potter books. Another reviewer elsewhere seemed shocked or worried that the mermaids are not wearing bikini tops or shells or whatnot to hide their breasts, which I found to be an odd thing to point out as it's barely mentioned. There are passages that describe the mermaids as beautiful, but they don't focus on body parts particularly (except the faces), so I can't quite see that as an issue - If mermaids existed I am pretty sure they wouldn't bother with wearing shells. Honestly.All in all, this was an excellent read, and I look forward to reading the rest of Luce's adventures in asserting her individuality. Despite the difficulties she is faced with; the cruelties of the fractured tribe, the knowledge that her gift of singing has murderous possibilities; Luce is a heroine learning to govern herself and discover her own strengths. Copy supplied by NetGalley.

[theepicrat · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am not sure what to make of Lost Voices, especially given the peculiar ending that does not really end and leaves you floundering like a beached mermaid. Sarah Porter's writing has a haunting quality, and Luce will appeal to the many of us who feel out-of-place in a world full of unnecessary sorrows and yearn for another life that promises new beginnings and new hopes.Yet the new life that Luce finds is not without sorrows either. Rather, it provokes a series of questions of whether Luce should play God, if given the power to lure unsuspecting people to drown. Should the mermaids punish the entire human race for the wrongs done by a few people? If their voices are not meant to be weapons of mass destruction, then what purpose do these mermaids have since they are unable to return to the human world and do not age whatsoever? Why do their voices seem to take on a life of their own and seem to resist being controlled by the singers?Lost Voices spurred all these questions, but I am not convinced if any of them get answered. This book was more of a set-up for what's to come, a careful and cautious introduction into a different world where mermaids are more fearsome than sparkly. In the middle of the book, there is a chapter that totally threw me off-guard - and for a second, I thought Lost Voices was not a single story but a collection of short stories since we get randomly thrown into a different story with new characters. Do not be alarmed, dear Readers, this story is one and the same. For whatever reason, Ms. Porter chose to take a quick dip into another story that will eventually lead back to Luce.The ending, as I mentioned earlier, stops rather abruptly. I reached the last page and thought it was a mistake because surely this is not the end of Luce's story! Lost Voices seemed to be just taking off into even deeper waters and ended far, far too soon! So now I'm hoping that Ms. Porter will shower us with many answers and blow us out of the waters with her sequel.

[lilibrarian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Abused girls turn into murderous mermaids.

[flashlight_reader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lost Voices is the first novel in a new series that is hauntingly reminiscent of Lord of the Flies and The Chocolate War. In this book, young girls find themselves transforming into mermaids during the most devastating and desolate times of their young lives. When overwhelmed with the horrors of humanity, these young girls from every walk of life release themselves to the power of the sea. Guided by the timahk—laws that govern mermaids—every mermaid joins a tribe and finds the love and family that they might have missed during their human days. For Luce, one of the newest members of Catarina’s tribe, joining the mermaids was the greatest thing that had happened to her in a long time. Luce was thrilled with her new life and the feelings of acceptance that she found in the other girls. But then Luce learns what it means to really be a mermaid. Sure, her voice is worthy of an angelic choir and her beauty surpasses anything on earth, but are these things really worth living with the guilt associated with being a siren? Luce is haunted by her eagerness to help the other mermaids sink ships and drown innocent humans. Then, Luce discovers a new power in her voice. She quickly learns that she can control the magic in her song, and change her death song into something more positive. Luce is overjoyed by her new knowledge, and wants to share her discovery with the other mermaids. This seems like a great idea, until Anais joins the tribe. Anais is pure evil in the form of the most radiant mermaid Luce has ever seen. The other mermaids are quickly drawn to her and desire to please her malevolent whims. Despite her power over the other mermaids, Anais doesn’t fool Luce. Luce can see the wickedness at the heart of the captivating mermaid and she wants to stop it. The timahk has always governed the behaviors of the mermaids, but not everyone is willing to follow the rules. Luce quickly learns that some rules have to be broken, and that she might have to stand alone. By the end of the novel, Luce is faced with a decision that will change the way mermaids conduct themselves forever. She is the key to restoring humanity to a race of beings that have been consumed with revenge for a long time. Lost Voices is captivating from the first page! Sarah Porter’s beautiful, descriptive language paints vivid pictures of beauty and pain. The sensuous descriptions of each character’s emotion force the reader to bond with the girls in the book. As you read, you can feel Luce’s pain in her memories, and the lust and greed of Anaise. The plot is fast paced, but perfectly developed; the tension that is building among the characters is felt on every page. As you read, you can’t help but notice the struggles of humanity that are felt in some of the modern classics of our times (i.e. Lord of the Flies, The Chocolate War). This series will certainly be worthy of shelf space next to Mr. Cormier and Mr. Golding.

[bookpurring · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this book, and I have to say it gets an extra star just for being original (I'm just tired of the vamps and the weres). I read this book as part of the Debut Author Challenge and this is my first mermaid book, I definitely would like to read more on the topic. I loved the author's description of the ocean and the mermaids life. The mermaids in this story were once girls who were mistreated and abandoned at some point in their human lives, the author does a great job at describing their emotions and their, very sad, stories and it definitely doesn't feel like its exploiting the reader into feeling sad or sorry for the characters. I really do feel like young readers could identify with some of the girls emotions throughout this book. I like Lucette, the heroine, she is brave, kind and a very good friend to the other mermaids. Anais, would fall into the "villain" category, and while she was very, very unlikable, I had to wonder how she got there.At points, I felt like this book was covering way too many story lines, or one would begin and I would get ready to read, learn more about, and it would abruptly end in that chapter. I also found myself rolling my eyes at some of the dialogue and the immature attitude of some of the girls, but I let this one slide because I'm obviously not the target audience. I prefer to roll my eyes than when YA authors totally forget what audience they are writing for and the book is too "adult," so to speak.Will I read the next book in the series? Absolutely, I want Anais to get eaten by an orca in the meantime.

[readingfever · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This review was originally published at: The Reading FeverMy ThoughtsI still don’t understand how Sarah Porter was able to keep me reading, despite being appalled at how excited the girls were at the prospect of helping people—especially men—drown. And there’s a lot of that happening in this book. Don’t call me prude just yet. I did, in fact, come to understand the feeling of need behind it, and the reasons these girls could be so drawn to sinking ships. Porter was able to create a group of girls whose personalities and interactions were exactly what one would expect from girls who have experienced such horrible things in their lives. I kept reading, hating what they were saying, doing, and how they interacted with each other, yet understanding that it was exactly how they should have behaved. The main character, Luce, reminded me a lot of the ocean—no pun intended. There always seemed to be this battle raging inside her, as calm as the sea at sunrise, and then as terrible as the deadliest storm. She fights between giving in to the tragically beautiful sensation of her siren’s call, and her horror at the thought of killing innocent people. She also has to worry about her place among the other mermaids in her tribe, and each of their reactions to her as she gets pulled deeper and deeper into her internal struggles.One of those mermaids is Catarina, the tribe’s Queen. I wasn’t too sure about her at first. Her character comes across as volatile, vengeful, and has a lot of ups and downs. She is quick to anger, and then quick to forgive, although she obviously does not trust anyone. It wasn’t until halfway through the book that I started to “get” her. Her present demeanor is a direct consequence of events from her past. Although she tries to be strong and fierce for her tribe, she is really just a girl mourning her past, and learning how to trust. Surprisingly, she ended up being my favorite character.I very much enjoyed the sections about Luce’s singing, and even the sections about Catarina’s singing. Porter wrote such wonderful description that I, myself, felt lured by the beautiful and tragic words on each page. The singing was rich in detail and I was captivated.What I didn’t like, however, was that Luce’s character didn’t stand up for herself very much, and it got frustrating at times. I wished each time a rude word was spoken to her, that she would say something instead of retreating back into her mind and her singing. I guess I really just wanted to see some sort of powerful mermaid argument, but Porter wasn’t having that. Not when most of Luce’s strength is in her ability to think through things.I was very surprised by the ending, which seemed to come out of nowhere. I ended up re-reading the ending a few times to try and make more sense of it. Although it ended on a word of hope, I feel like it could have benefited with even a few more lines of description to make it a more definite ending. After reading, I had the feeling that I, as the reader, had been sung to by Porter’s words. At times the song was grim and scary, and at other times it only hinted of a danger close by. I was immersed in this story, and given a dark, gripping tale.I was given a copy of this book to review, courtesy of Netgalley.

[jaidisshaw · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lost Voices by Sarah Porter was everything I was hoping it would be when I first read the synopsis and so much more. Naturally being drawn to the sea, I was excited to have the chance to read about Luce, a lonely fourteen year old girl, who is having a difficult time in life after the death of her parents. Sent to live with an abusive and drunk uncle, Luce has to endure things that no person, especially a child, should have to. Luce's story takes a drastic turn when she finds herself as a mermaid. With so many questions that need answered, Luce struggles to find a balance between her new life as a mermaid and the human life she left behind. I really enjoyed the unique twist Ms. Porter uses to explain how exactly it is that mermaids are created. Lost Voices ended more abruptly then I would have liked, even though Lost Voices is book one in a trilogy. Regardless, Ms. Porter's writing is filled with such raw emotions and beautiful imagery that I was instantly hooked!

[krau0098 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I got an advanced reading copy of this book through netgalley.com. I was very excited to read this book about mermaids from debut author Sarah Porter. This is the first in a trilogy (which I didn't know when I picked it up to read, my bad). After reading it I was bit disappointed in how dark the story was and how abruptly it ended. That being said the writing was beautifully done for the most part.Luce is fourteen and has had a tough life. Her mother is dead, her dad is missing, and she can never seem to fit in at school. Now she is living with her uncle who beats her when he isn't busy ignoring her. One night on a cliff in town things get out of hand; her uncle beats her and tries to rape her. Luce escapes but then succumbs to the cold on the side of the cliff. She awakes to find herself in the ocean...she is a mermaid. Now she must navigate mermaid politics and do her best to not completely give in to the urge to sing seafarers to their death.This is a very, very dark book. I am not sure what age group Porter is aiming for. It seems like a book more appropriate to the older YA crowd, but the main character is only 14 years old. The descriptions never get extremely explicit but there is a lot of abuse, sexual and otherwise in this book. All of the girls that are mermaids become mermaids because of something dark or life threatening happening to them. So, all of the girls have history of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. Subjects such as rape, suicide are dealt with throughout.While I enjoyed the fact that mermaid mythology was combined with that of sirens singing seafarers to their death, I was a bit disappointed at Luce's time with the mermaids. The group of mermaids that she joins is not unlike high school; there is a lot of posturing between the girls, they form cliques, and cat-fight a lot. I felt like the middle of the book was one big cat-fight between Luce and the Queen mermaid and it was somewhat boring. At points the writing style is very beautiful though and you can really feel Luce's love and wonder for the ocean.That being said there are some really interesting elements brought into this book. There is the mystery of the larva that are not quite mermaids and the laws the mermaids are supposed to follow (no interaction with humans beyond singing them to death). The implications of these elements could be interesting, but they were not explored at all in this book. In fact the book pretty much leaves everything unresolved and ends right in the middle of a scene.Overall it was an okay story. The book is beautifully written, incorporates some interesting elements, and I loved reading about mermaids. It is a very dark book though and deals a lot of sexual and physical abuse, which is not my favorite subject to read about. I thought the interaction between the mermaids was shallow and catty, and nothing is resolved in this book...things are only introduced. At this point I am not sure whether or not I will read the next book. This book was pretty depressing and I absolutely hate it when books start a story and end without, well, any sort of actual ending.

[mrsderaps · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lost Voices is a story of a group of lost girls who have reclaimed some power over lives that have been ruined through abuse, torture, and neglect. Each of the girls in this group has a story and each one is shocking and painful in its own right.We start this story with Luce, the main character. She's living with her uncle after her mother has died and her father disappears at sea. He uncle is cruel and abusive, but Luce has found ways to skirt his anger and to hide from his violent outbursts. That is, until the night that he hurts her in a different way--a near rape.In a scene full of magic and surprising calm, Luce transforms from a broken, bloody girl to a gorgeous mermaid. She finds herself in the ocean, surrounded by a group of mermaids who are all former victims of some sort of abuse. The leader of this tribe, Catarina, tells Luce about their mermaid code, the "timakh." It's a pretty simple code, consisting of two rules: you cannot knowingly hurt another mermaid and you cannot have any sort of contact with humans.Quickly, Luce begins to see that the timakh is not going to be the greatest of her undersea worries. To seek retribution for the crimes committed against them, the mermaids sink ships and kill every human on board. No survivors. As angry as Luce is about her human past, she has a difficult time reconciling her new job as a hunter of men (and women and girls and boys). And, she is blessed with an unfortunately alluring siren's song. When she sings underwater, sailors happily commit suicide. How will Luce begin to heal from her childhood pain if she is forced to kill for centuries to come?* * *This is my first book involving mermaids. Initially, I was drawn to this book because of gorgeous cover and the interesting description of its plot. I have read many YA books that deal with the subject of abused and neglected teens, but this one seemed to come from such an original place. I had to read it. And, I read it in one sitting. It had some slow areas, and it was definitely difficult at times to set aside my disbelief about some aspects of this book, but overall I thought that it was entertaining and interesting. I was drawn in by Luce, and intrigued by some of the other mermaids, Catarina in particular. She is the leader of this tribe of mermaids and is definitely hiding some secrets from the girls, even while demanding that they be open and honest with her. More than the paranormal aspect of this book, I am left thinking about the true lost girls and lost voices in this world. There are so many lives that are lost to us from child abuse and there is so much that needs to be done to fight against it. At the beginning of the book, before Luce became a mermaid, her character was so realistic that I felt extremely connected to her. I couldn't help but be reminded of girls that I've worked with in the past who displayed a lot of the same characteristics as Luce. I don't know that I love reading about mermaids more than my usual paranormal creatures--werewolves and the like. But, this is an interesting new(ish) segment of the YA paranormal world that I'm interested in reading more about. And, lucky for me, there are two more planned books in this series. This book will be released by Harcourt in July of 2011 and it is the author's debut novel.

[usagijihen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This a very interesting take on the traditional mermaid tale. I really love what Porter has done with the idea of how mermaids are born, and how they can become human.The idea of severe child abuse (especially on girls) creating mermaids is a fascinating one. What’s even more fascinating is that we never, not once, see a male mermaid (merman?), but we do see younger female mermaids that are called “larvae”. The cruelty that has created all of the mermaids except for Luce seems to increase over the years – with the traditional legend of Siren singing down ships, and letting the larvae die instead of helping them survive. Why is Luce different? Why does she cling to her humanity instead of embrace her new life as a mermaid, and get revenge upon the people who hurt her so much when she was a real girl?I suppose this is a story of the path not taken, in a sense. Had Luce embraced her new life as a mermaid, she wouldn’t have regained her humanity and very self as we know it. Had she embraced her mermaid self, she might have become as bad as her creators in terms of cruelty and its use against sailors.This is a gorgeous and lushly written book, and once you finish it, you wish it’d never ended. Absolutely wonderful, one of the best of 2011 so far. If you’re looking for something new to read that’s based on an old story, read this book. You’ll never look at child abuse or mermaids the same again.

[spongebobetta · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wow, for a book about mermaids this is pretty powerful stuff! Sarah Porter has created a darkly compelling tale of abused children, murderous mermaids and teenage bullying. The writing is good and it is easy to picture the world that is being created despite it being about fantasy creatures.14 year old Luce has lost her mother and father and lives with her abusive uncle. She copes with this by mostly keeping quiet and not drawing attention to herself. Then one evening her uncle tries to inflict his worst assault yet.The emotional pain of the incident and preceding events turns Luce into a mermaid. Mermaids are young girls who have been mistreated by the humans who were supposed to look after them. The Mermaids dislike humans because of their troubled human lives and delight in singing to boats that pass their way enchanting the humans aboard and causing them to jump into the ocean and drown.Luce finds a home with a tribe of mermaids led by their queen Caterina. Caterina's character is fascinating and I changed my opinion of her several times as the story developed. Luce's devotion to Caterina was a bit much, however, almost bordering on obsession.As more new mermaids join the tribe there is unrest among them which I suppose is kind of political but was more a demonstration of how teenage girls can behave toward each other and be either wonderful friends or bitter enemies from one day to the next, driven mostly by their own insecurities.The most important thing to the mermaids is singing. A great voice is considered a gift and the best singer is always the Queen of the tribe. Luce's voice is amazing from the beginning which both pleases and threatens Caterina as existing Queen. Luce seems oblivious to how good her voice is at first, and even after she learns more about what she can do with her singing she has no desire to take Caterina's place. Luce also struggles with the killing humans part of being a mermaid and is torn between the intense need to sing and the guilt at what the singing does to the humans. The power struggle between Luce, Caterina and a shallow selfish mermaid named Anais has some dramatic consequences which were left mostly hanging at the end of the book.I was disappointed with the ending as the story just kind of stopped. I assume the next in the series will pick up from there but it was still quite disappointing to be left hanging.The ending aside, I found the second half of the book better than the first. I didn't really get properly into the story until the ninth chapter and would have liked Luce's pre-mermaid life to have been expanded on a little more. Overall I enjoyed this book and look forward to the next in the series.

[booksforcompany · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was my first mermaid book l have read, since now l have never been interested in reading one so this book was kind of make and break for me as to whether l would be reading more mermaid books in the future.My first thought when l picked up this book was ‘Oh no, they are using the same name for the main character as a book l have read recently’ (Fallen) This can be really distracting and you can find yourself thinking back to the other book and characters, especially if that book was a fantastic read for you. Therefore this book really needed to make Luce unique so in my mind a new individual character was created. It wasn’t long till this happened, the book quickly introduces you to Luce and shows the reader Luce’s world and feelings.This book interested me in a number of different ways and l was able to enjoy this book because half the time l forgot they were mermaids. The friendships in this book really keeps you gripped, reading how they develop or in other cases go the opposite way of developing. Even when the life’s of the mermaids were described in detail (some bits l struggled to connect with) the world which Luce lives in starts to feel real. Another thing l love about this book is how both the title and cover relate so much to the book, the title ‘Lost voices’ really starts to mean something.It was a shame when l got to the end of this book, not only because the book was finished but l found the ending the biggest disappointment of the book, it really didn’t do the book any justice. I thought if this book was a ‘stand alone book’ you would be left feeling very disappointed and as a book with an upcoming sequel (l believe) it really didn’t leave you desperate to read it.The end result for me was an enjoyable read with the possibility of reading more mermaid books in the future.