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“Is he a sadist who kidnapped you? Or a man who saved your life?”

Author: Darcy Coates

She’s driving, desperate to get to her sister in time. The news channels on the radio all predict doom and terror. Then, in the depths of the forest she is cutting through, something leaps into the road. Then there is silence, snow, and pain.

Clare wakes, not remembering why she left her home nor what happened on the road. She’s hurt, but apparently taken care of, in a bed in an imposing old mansion, cared for by a strange, large man. He claims that he means her no harm – but this place was never here before. Her sister would warn her to trust no one; her sister would tell her striking into the snow and the unknown outside is better, especially when Clare begins seeing things (ghosts?) that her captor/custodian (Dorian) claims not to see.

What would you do if the world ended, and you missed it? What would you do if you woke up, warm, fed, cared for, but trapped? Would you trust the man with the strange story in the gothic mansion with its creaking corners and flitting shadows? And what would you do when suddenly, you remembered everything – why you left and why you crashed?

Voices in the Snow is one of Darcy Coate’s stranger books. I admit that it’s not a favorite, although later books in the series find their feet and propose a unique outlook on the ages-old zombie apocalypse story. But here, in book one, it’s slow and sloppy.

Image by Nicholas Panek from Pixabay

It starts off wanting, desperately, to be a haunted house story. We have all the ingredients and the slow, half-seen “things go bump in the night” vibe. We spend a lot of time hearing about this beautiful, austere house. We hear about its convenient isolation and a “ah well” explanation of why no one else knows its there. We get a weird, VC Andrews like family (minus the incest, admittedly) and a story of cloistered abuse that has led Dorian to, somehow, be kind and caring and brave and competent – just not with his mommy dearest, who has a penchant for control and putting a little something in the drinks.

It’s ultimately unbelievable. Partly because of who Dorian is as a character and partly because it just makes no sense. The evil mother, our major antagonist for this book, kills other family members, ostensibly to control her son. It’s too risky for a woman so supposedly intelligent and its also way too cartoon villain-ish.

But before we get to all of that, there is a lot of Clare randomly freaking out about Dorian and running into the snow or creeping around the mansion. This distrust and “he may seem kind, but he’s my captor” conveniently goes out the window when its time for the characters to form an oddly platonic but soul-deep insta-romance. Just, what? What?

Meanwhile, midway through the book, the entire idea of ghosts in the mansion gets dropped, and we finally get some answers. What is out in the snow and in the house are zombies, who were conveniently shy and mostly remiss through the first half of the book, but are now climatically hungry and fast, fast, fast. They also climb trees, because of course they do.

While we do get answers in book two about what started the zombie apocalypse (they call them Hollows here) and why the zombies are strangely mutated, no such attempt at an explanation is provided in this book. The entire end of the world thing is all very outside the scope of the story, and Dorian’s mother makes a weird, completely inexplicable return, armed with yet another bizarre plan to ultimately torture him.

It’s all admittedly very weak, but it is Darcy Coates, so even though she appears to be struggling to decide just what path this book wants to take, there is quality here. The woman can just capture atmosphere and people (except Dorian). I cared about Clare; I was into the ominous nature of the snowstorm and the silence. I was curious where this would go, and willing to trust Coates to be a little weird and a little unsure with this one.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have gone for the second book in the series after this, but my husband, who listed to the audio book with me, wanted to try the next book. I’m ultimately glad that I did, because the next book settles more comfortably into this new world and solves the slow plotting while building out Clare and Dorian further. Recommended, but don’t start your Coates journey here.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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