The Voices (Full) by 

Reviewed by ESHurricane

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Overview

The Voices is a total creepshow, a slow burn of terror that snuck up on me and built and built and built without ever really smashing me over the head. Once I realized I was creeped out, it was too late, and I was strapped in for the ride.

**IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THIS BOOK, DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW! JUST GO READ THE BOOK. DO IT.**

The book centers on Janna, a woman that hears voices in her head like a schizophrenic. As the story wears on, she reveals more and more of her past with her abusive family. The voices get more specific and weird things start to happen in her house, that makes her (and the reader!) question everything that's happening around her.

Cover/Title

The title is extremely fitting, because there are voices in her head, but also keep the truth of the story hidden because it's not super specific. The cover is dark and terrifying, with an anguished face looking like it's inside of the top of a head. Above 'THE VOICES' it says 'do you hear' which definitely sets the tone for the story.

Summary/Description

The Summary is a little long for such a short story. I like it, and it drew me in, but I feel like it might be necessary to have an excerpt at the beginning here. The simplicity of the cover and title give it such a mysterious tone, and I feel like it's diluted by the overly long summary.

However, the second half that starts with 'Do you hear the voices?' is absolutely perfect, right down to the end where it says 'Get ready to question everything'. This is a very fitting tag line, because I for one was questioning all kinds of wacky stuff (as well as some of the other readers in the comments!), and it felt really interactive.

Hook

The first line is a single word. Slap. It is a stark quick word and metaphorically slapped me in the face. And then dragged me in, hook line and sinker.

The blunt force of this first paragraph of abuse had that underlying terror of somebody close to someone being able to hurt them so much. It was nothing paranormal, nothing weird or creepy, just a stark reality of someone getting beaten by somebody else.

This kind of fearless writing blows my mind and gets me really excited to read a piece.

Grammar/Structure

The grammar was almost perfect, I had very few suggestions. The author did an amazing job sticking to standard grammar rules and the structure was impeccable.

Also, for a story to be 5000 words and have 16 chapters would seem insane on the surface, but it's pulled off so so well here. This book could probably just be one long document with paragraph breaks instead of chapter breaks, but that adds so much to the power of the piece. Every time a chapter ended I was leaving comments like 'ahhhhhh' or 'eeeeeekkkk', and having to click a button to find out what insanity awaited me was part of the experience.

Characters

The characters were very vague but very BIG. Janna herself was like a shell of a person, floating in and out of consciousness, in and out of the present and the past, guiding me through this journey of a troubled person trying to put the pieces of herself together. It was amazing that such a broken character could just be broken, and feel that way, without the narrative ever feeling thin or lacking.

Her family and the characters in the past seemed, as I said, really huge. They were these looming figures in the distance, standing over her with the power to decide things for her, hurt her, tell her how to act and who to be and what she should be doing with her time and her body. That was one of the most terrifying things about this story was just that people could be that cruel to someone, let alone a family member. This kind of rawness made for some really awful characters that I wanted to strangle. I love that kind of intense reaction to fictional characters.

The 'voices' were the biggest head explode moment for me, though. They were their own characters, and even though I found out at the end that they really were separate people, it was amazing that just through voice the author was able to differentiate them so well at the beginning. At one point Janna reveals that they actually have names, and tells me about it, which I found simultaneously cool and offputting.

It was cool because it made her seem extra crazy. At first I'd thought she was schizophrenic, but then when I realized that there were different people in her head, I thought it was maybe multiple personality disorder. Soon after that I thought she had a haunted skull, but more on that later.

The reason I found it a bit offputting was just the way it was told to me. I'm a big fan of showing not telling, and though exposition is sometimes unavoidable, I feel like the author has more than enough skill to have carried these characters without telling me their personalities. I don't even think they really needed names. They each had a unique voice, and I was able to differentiate that there were multiple consistent voices in Janna's head. It was surreal and creepy and awesome all at the same time, and I think that telling us who they are and what their personalities were just cheapened them a little bit. The author definitely has the skillset to bring these characters to life without even addressing them as characters.

That being said, I didn't find that having them come out as separate people diluted the later chapters at all. It didn't give me an inkling as to what was to come at the end.

Narrative

The narrative flowed so well that it could have been a river. It was poetry when it needed to be, uncomfortable when it needed to be, and sometimes just pure panic. There were some instances where the sentences got staccato and abrupt and it just oozed suspense. The author did a great job of using structural tools like line breaks and sentence length to really add flavour to the text.

The imagery was incredibly deep, the descriptions tangible. Much of it was very vivid and gross, and sometimes I was just cringing away because I could feel everything that was being said (chunk of flesh tearing). I spent a lot of time shivering and physically reacting to the descriptions as if I was actually there.

Narrative voice was concise and consistent, being very ethereal and confusing. Seeing everything through Janna's eyes was bold and uncomfortable, because it made me feel honestly like I was going crazy too. Very well crafted!

I have just one suggestion, and it's more of a pet peeve than anything else. There were a few instances where a description was used through Janna's eyes, instead of her just describing it. It's something that is extremely hard to avoid in first person POV, because we get so used to showing everything through the protagonist. But it reads a lot tighter (to me, anyway) if it's cut. For example, one line is:

I felt a heat prickle it's way up from my feet to the crown of my skull.

I love this line, so much. It's very visceral. But I feel like it could be so much more powerful with one small change:

Heat prickled its way from my feet to the crown of my skull.

I already know that if Janna is describing something happening to her body that she's feeling it happen, because I'm in her head. Everything that happens in her environment is something that she's seeing, feeling, smelling, etc. So to add that in is just kind of redundant, and I find it just dilutes the narrative a bit.

The tone set by the entire narrative to me was the overall feeling of absolute helplessness. It made me feel like I was just being swept up in Janna's life, and she was being swept away by everything else, and we were just clutching each other until we crashed into the end of the story like a tidal wave. Pure brutality, and it was incredibly exhilarating!

Plot/Pacing

The plot was unique and exciting in a very confusing and interesting way. I liked that I was constantly questioning everything in between cringing at what was happening. The exposition never came off as expositiony (except in my character example above), using flashes of memory and excellent imagery to tell me about what was going on instead of just telling me things.

It was in chapter five that I started to realize that maybe she wasn't just a schizophrenic, and theorized she either had multiple personality disorder or maybe her head was haunted.

Chapter eleven was when the real estate agent first showed up, and that's when I started to think that maybe Janna was either dead or not real. I wasn't sure why a real estate agent would be trying to sell her house without her first hiring her. And when everything flew out of the cupboards, I was extra confused. I thought maybe the voices in her head were ghosts, and they were haunting the house, holding her hostage somehow maybe?

At chapter thirteen, I thought, is this the girl in the dream who got killed when she first moved in? All of these dreams and flashbacks were starting to run together and I had no clue what was happening. It was awesome.

Then things really took a turn for the even weirder when the real estate agent led the prospective clients down to the sub basement and found a dog cage. Then I was freaking out, was Janna a dog?! What was going on?

And then BOOM, she's a ghost, they're all ghosts, and she just had to accept that she was dead. Her parents left her down there in a cage to die, because they're horrible people. And that's terrifying in itself. The closing line: You don't matter because you don't exist is quite possibly the most chilling ending to a book I've read in a very long time, and left me with a bad taste in my mouth. (But that's a good thing!)

Closing Comments

Overall, I loved this book. It was chilling in a subtle way, and though it had a clear beginning, middle and end, I felt like even though it resolved the mystery everything still sucked just as bad as it did at the beginning. Which might be depressing to some, but it's the kind of unique story that I like. It's very bold to end a story like that, with the protagonist worse off than when they started, doomed to a life (or death, I guess) of sadness and mental torture.

It was in this way that however paranormal, this book was also very real. It showed the worst of humankind, and that not everything is rainbows and roses all the time. It was a really amazing slice of horror fiction and I would recommend it to anyone that likes a good freaky ride.