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Fourteen-year-old Luce reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside of her 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. Will Luce be pressured into committing mass murder?
On her 14th birthday, Luce enters a dark world of mermaids in this foreboding yet ultimately uneventful debut.
After a life of thievery on the road, her single dad tried to give her normalcy by settling down and taking a fishing job in an Alaskan coastal village. Since his boat disappeared a year ago, Luce has been living with her violent, alcoholic uncle. When he tries to rape her, Luce liquefies, reforms as a mermaid and is taken in by a group of cliquish mermaids, who were all mistreated girls as humans. Reminiscent of Kevin Brooks, Porter blends lyrical narration with the ever-present threat of sinister violence. Like The Odyssey's Sirens, these mermaids, led by their queen, Catarina, use their voices to lure ships to destruction and their passengers to death. Equally fascinated and repulsed by the process, Luce, a naturally gifted singer bound by the mermaids' code of honor, tries to think of a way to turn their voices from tools of evil into beauty. Adding to her dilemma are Catarina's insecurities and secret compromises to the mermaid code and the arrival of the once-spoiled and wealthy Anais, who tries to usurp Catarina's power. The real problem is that Luce takes too long to find her own voice and the tension wears thin.
A sudden ending to this slow-paced story will leave readers floundering. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
ReadergirlReviews
Posted March 24, 2011
It was the gorgeous cover that first drew me to this book, as well as the premise of girls turning into mermaids, but be warned. These are not your Disney mermaids. This book was raw, emotional, disturbing, and sad. It was also lovely.
I've always been intrigued by mermaids. Not the cutesy Little Mermaid variety, but the old myths about beautiful sea creatures who gorgeous siren songs lured fisherman and other men to their deaths. I always wondered why a creature's purpose would be just to lure people into drowning or hurling themselves from their boats, and Sarah Porter explains it well. The idea that these once girls now mermaids sing their song because it gives them immensely beautiful feelings, and that they've been so abused by humans that they want to destroy them for their actions is both sad and disturbing.
Luce is the sole exception, as she still remembers people that she loved. Her new persona doesn't quite take hold completely, which allows her to maintain some of her humanity that the others have completely lost. I found myself completely overcome when I read about the larvae, or small baby mermaids. The idea that babies could have been so abused by humans that this would happen to them too made my heart hurt.
With the way the story ended, I would like to say there is going to be a sequel, especially since this book didn't really have a concrete ending like what I would expect. It seemed to just end. Bottom line, this book was excellent but disturbing. I'm glad that I read it, and definitely think we have an author here with some amazing talent that I can't wait to see more of.
18 out of 18 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.With her mother dead and her father in jail, Lucette lives with her abusive Uncle in a small coastal town in Alaska. When a particularly brutal night causes Luce to accidentally slip off the cliff and into the ocean below, she does not expect to survive. However, Luce soon wakes up and discovers she is now one of the many young girls to become mermaids of the sea. Luce meets others like herself and quickly adapts to her new life underwater. But when queen mermaid Catarina begins to act secretive and vindictive, Luce needs to think for herself... before something terrible happens.
Those of you who follow this blog know I read a LOT of mermaid books. So there are a lot I can compare this one to. and while there are mermaid stories that are much better, this one wasn't that bad, really. Nothing in story came even close to being as beautiful as the cover art, but it was still an enjoyable read. Luce is a very compassionate 14-year-old girl. She so often thinks of others before herself. The other character in comparison felt a little flat and undeveloped. But I liked that the girls still had your typical girl troubles (mostly in getting along with each other). I also appreciated the science and biology of Sarah Porter's mermaids, especially in their coveted singing abilities. My only complaint is the serious lack of guys in this book! You can't possibly convince me that teen girls weren't on the lookout for boys! Lost Voices is a lovely mermaid story that is just as playful as it is dark and moody.
8 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 20, 2011
This was one of the best books I have ever read. However, it really needs a sequel. The ending was very non-conclusive.
7 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 25, 2011
Gee, when I first saw it, it looked interesting. a couple of chapters more, I fell in love with this ammaaazzzzziiiinnnnggggg book!!!! I normally arent a fan of lady aouthors, but i got to say, Sarah Porter had done a fantastic job.
5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 24, 2011
I would absolutely recommend reading this book. The author creates a world full of dark beauty without making the characters inaccessable to teen girls. I am also intriged by the underlying thees of the story- that abuse leads to (in this case literally) losing one's humanity and prepetuating the cycle of violence and destruction. Luce, filled with insecurity but also more power than she knows, fights to break the cycle without losing the only place she feels loved.
5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Sarah Porter's new book, Lost Voices, is a raw, emotional, dark, and sad tale. Addressing the abuses of young girls at the hands of the people, who should love them and take care of them. Even touching on the subject of abandoned babies, which made my heart ache. While originally I was drawn to read this book because of its cover and the premise of girls turning into mermaids as I read this book it became clear this book would not follow the suit of most "Teen" novels.
This book does not prepare you for the depths of sadness you will feel for the main character and all her loss and drama. The whole cast of characters in this opening novel are so intense and emotional, which is expected from young girls, from the meek and shy, to the outspoken and prissy snot. As the girls for the most part struggle with their anger of the human world, use their voices to seek out justified vengeance.
5 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 4, 2011
Lost Voices is a dark, moving and tantalizing first book in a new trilogy by Sarah Porter. Luce, the young protagonist, finds herself turned into a mermaid after her human life is brutally ended. We find that it is this tragic end to young girls which turns them into mermaids - an interesting twist and one which explains the mermaids desire to sink human ships using their magical voices. Luce struggles with this as she still retains her humanity and a deep sensitivity. Her struggle and intrinsic differences from the other mermaids moves the story in the most absorbing way. While some of the mermaids are not exactly sympathetic and the ending is a bit sudden, I am confident that the next book in this series will be just as much a "can't put down" as Lost Voices is. I highly recommend this book and look forward to future writings by this author.
4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 28, 2011
This book was beautiful and captivating. The story is very sad but also compelling. Abused girls who turn into Mermaids off the coast of Alaska. Luce lives with her abusive uncle after her father dies in a ship wreck. Her mother has been dead already and she travels with her father. Her uncle, her fathers brother, promises work in Alaska with boats. One night her uncle crosses the line and she finds herself in the ocean. She meets a tribe of Mermaids and they welcome her in. They all have a sad story that they don't want to talk or think about. They just want to kill humans for their evil ways. This book is a must read. The first in a trilogy that I can't wait to get my hands on!
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 12, 2011
Lost Voices is a haunting, lyrical novel which uses the paranormal to illustrate difficult moral choices. The mermaids in the novel represent a return of the repressed - girls are transformed into mermaids as the result of a traumatic act. These mermaids are filled with a righteous vengeance, and use their voices to sink ships and drown humans. Luce, the protagonist, is an outcast in the human world. Upon becoming a mermaid, she is overjoyed to be accepted by their society. Yet her growing understanding of mermaid nature provokes internal conflict. Mermaids have a moral code, the timahk; the plot of the novel is driven by Luce's relationships with other mermaids and their moral code. While Lost Voices has grim subject matter, its overall message is one of perseverance, discovery and truth-seeking. It is absolutely beautifully written. Thematically reminiscent of the young adult classics of Robert Cormier, Lost Voices is a book that should allow readers to examine the humanity within themselves. Most highly recommended.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 1, 2011
This book left me with some very strange feelings. I felt intrigued about the plot. The way it is written makes everything feel like a beautiful dream. However, some parts also had me horrified or appalled by how harsh it becomes. By the end... I feel like the harsh and horrible parts were necessary to make the beautiful and good stand out. Lovely!
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 17, 2013
...
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 1, 2013
This book was really descriptive and desisive. It felt as if the author wanted me to feel the pain Luce ( main character) felt the songs that flew through her.This book was amazing, you will love it
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 21, 2012
WOW!
I was told about this book by a friend so I tried it and wow! it was so amazing i could not put the book down i didn't think i would like it so much since im not a reader. But i was wrong you have to read it!!!! dont judge a book by its cover you really will like it!!!!!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 7, 2011
It was so great to read
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 5, 2011
i really enjoyed this book. the writing was beautiful, the characters were interesting and the darkness made the story so much more engaging. it's such a great beginning to what i can only expect to be an amazing trilogy.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I will start off by saying that I did enjoy this book. The way Porter combines sirens and mermaids and the way they were created was very interesting. The plot was interesting and I was really excited when I picked it up. BUT the book was extremely slow-paced and nothing truly significant happened the entire story.Towards the end of the book some things finally happen and you start getting excited and it just abruptly ends. This is ment to be a series but I don't see it being very successful if there isn't anything important enough to remember in the first book. Personally I felt the writing of this could have been alot better than it was but it was still a good read.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.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.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Lost Voices was a decent read. I had to force myself to pick it back up after it started to drag in the middle, but it is a decent start to a new trilogy. The reader is enticed into a world where abused girls transform into mermaids and sing sailors to their deaths with their otherworldly voices. Luce, newly transformed, feels guilty about killing and wonders if it is possible to be a mermaid and not kill humans. The story follows Luce's emotional journey as she tries to come to terms with her new life and decide between her new friends and her human morals. Lost Voices is a new take on mermaids and an emotional story of a girl struggling between fitting in and doing the right thing.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 25, 2011
Luce is a 14 year old girl who is painfully shy and tries so hard to fade in to the background wherever she is. She's spent nearly her entire life on the road and on the run with her father (a medium-time crook). Her father, in an effort to do right by her, moves the duo to an Alaskan town where her uncle (her dad's brother) lives. There, her father joins a fishing boat crew and sails out to sea, never to be seen or heard from again. The disappearance leaves Luce stranded with an uncle who is an alcoholic and neglectful, not to mention very abusive.
Human life for ends for Luce on a terribly dark and lonely night after her uncle tries to violate her during a drunken stupor. She feels herself simply give up and give in to a cold, almost numbing feeling. She thinks she's died, but soon learns that not only is she still living, but that she transformed into a mermaid. She's adopted into a tribe of mermaids who have all been victims of abandonment and mistreatment. They spend their days giggling and acting like typical teenage girls with the exception that they've also found solace in exacting their revenge on humans by "singing" to humans on ships, enchanting them into crashing into cliffs and then ensure that every human on board parishes.
In a culture where 'singers' are the cream of the mermaid crop, Luce finds herself in the middle of conflict. She is the most talented singer within their tribe, able to curve her song to fill and forgive the pains left in the hearts, memories, and souls of humans and mermaids alike. The queen of the tribe is convinced that Luce means to overthrow her and Luce is fighting against the lure and the pressure of singing humans to their death. As new members of the tribe are discovered or brought in, the level of strife is elevated. Readers are introduced to strong and malicious as well as sweet yet impressionable personalities, both making the waters volatile and the tribe more dangerous than ever.
Will Luce find balance? Will she find peace? And will she find the place where she belongs?
The most beautiful parts of the story, for me, had to do with the memories Luce holds of her father. I felt the love he had for his only child. My heart broke every time she thought of her former life with her father and heard him talking to her. Though he was a criminal, a "bad" man to so many, the love and adoration he held for his "baby doll" was flawless.
Luce's dreams were another part of the story that I found to be very moving and poignant. I felt Luce's sadness and her turmoil in the dreams - reaching for something that wasn't open to her anymore and seeing her fears and her insecurities being flaunted before her.
What prevents me from rating this novel a 4 out of 5 stars is that I couldn't feel the connection or the relationships within the tribe. Several times, Luce describes feeling a deep love and a belonging to the tribe, but I didn't feel it.
I was also thrown by the introduction of the girls/mermaids from the orphanage. To move from Luce's story to their story and back again, wasn't exactly confusing, but I'm not sure it was necessary, either.
There are also a few loose ends, not large enough to be considered cliff hangers, at the end of the story. Questions that will probably be addressed in future installments of the series, if the readers are committed to continuing Luce's tale (no pun intended).
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 22, 2011
When I first saw this book in the catalogue of netGalley I knew I had to read it so I put a request for this book and a couple of others. The first letter that got back to me was a rejection and told me that it was because I keep putting off writing my bio. I still have not done that. I began to become afraid that I would not be able to read this one because of my absentee bio page and so was beyond ecstatic that I was given the go ahead to read it. The only problem was that I had just got back to school and I was now swamped with homework. I did the responsible thing and put my homework first. And when I finally had enough I whipped out my nook transferred the book there and spent the rest of the night and several hours the next day devouring Lost Voices by Sarah Porter.
Lost Voices is the first book of a series and it should be. If it had been a stand alone I would have been forced to say some bad things about it but as it is a trilogy I have hope for the next two books. Or if she follows in the footsteps of so many authors before her there might be more even though it was only meant to be a trilogy. You know what I mean: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Those are a good one time read.
But Lost Voices is hard to put down. I picked it up to read an hour or so before going to bed and yet I was unable to stop until there was no physical way for me to continue. I loved the mythology of mermaids and I liked how Luce tries to keep her humanity. I didn't really understand why she was shunned when she was human though. I felt that Luce while Luce grew she did not really become all that different from the beginning but there is still hope in the second and third book of the series. This book showed a lot of potential.
I liked Luce the most. While she was the main character she also was the only one to really retain any of her humanity. All of the other girls were a little evil. In fact I think that a couple of the characters in this book could have been left out because they added nothing to the story. However since they did not take anything away from the story either they did not really bug me too much. Finally I am not really all that sure who will ultimately be the ultimate antagonist for this series. Luce tries to defy the desire to kill humans that every mermaid has. In the spirit of speculation I think that the next book might touch a bit more on mermen. I think and I hope. But for this book you mostly only just dipped your toes into the world and I look forward to being able to see more about it.
There is a mermaid queen named Catarina and I get the feeling that we were supposed to like her yet I could not really get onto that boat. Catarina was pretty psycho and I really wanted Luce to find someone else to become friends with and at one point I thought that she would but in the end the chance turned into nothing. Luce is just a little to desperate for somebody.
There were a few things that I did not really like about this book. I felt that there were some points that were much too vague. And I am a little confused on what to call the ending. It is not really a cliffhanger but more like the author put the first page or two of the second book onto the end of the first. Because all of the action is finished by the end of the book but then it gives you just a hint of a problem that will be in the second book. Does that even make sense? Anyway it was an evil teaser to the second book because of the fact that
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Overview
Fourteen-year-old Luce reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside of her 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 ...