Oh dear…this was not what I thought it would be at all.

The story sounded like it was going to be so interesting but the writing style is all over the place. I felt like I had no idea what was going on most of time. There’s also a large, and what feels unnecessary amount of racism in the book too. Ultimately I did not enjoy this.

I hate to be "that person" but the only good thing about this was the cover and title. There was potential but it fell so flat. This needs to go back to the drawing board. Themes that were racist and honestly shocking that no one edited out. The voice from the dead was just eh. Im so disappointed in this book and disappointed I requested it and wasted my time reading it.

wanted to enjoy this one after such an intriguing cover and promising storyline but voice from the dead really fell short for me after seeing the many low reviews detailing both the poor execution and excessive talk of nazis, alongisde other inherently racist themes; so i think i'll save myself the time and skip out on this one.

thank you netgalley and the publisher for this arc!

okay, bear with me. i've got to be honest, i've read better work on AO3. This book felt really chaotic. the world building was loose and just felt like a mish mash of different folklore/beliefs/ideas. it didn't flow as though the author truly had a grip of their own story while at the same time i felt like i was missing bits? like the author wasn't giving us the whole picture. i also found some of the dialogue pretty cringe... this book had potential!!

oh boy oh boy. i really wish i never requested this book. the premise was great, but thats it. just the premise. this book infuriated me, the writing was confusing and all over the place, there were so many details and aspects to the story that were historically inaccurate, which made the reading even more frustrating. i really wish i didn't read this.

The cover is stunning but the writing style just didn’t do it for me. I DNF’D it at 10% because it just felt too all over the place for me. I neverrrrr dnf books but I just couldn’t with this one. I think this book is made for a very specific audience.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity!

The bones are there, but everything else was poor to middling. The 2 stars is for the concept alone, because it could have been good...it just failed at every point.

The characters were messy, the writing felt like a bad translation and was clumsy, and I genuinely thought "I should just DNF this" every other page.

The world doesn't make sense, even with the character explaining thing every other page, none of the action was well written enough to follow at any point, and towards the climax of the novel there were errors in the ebook that made it near-impossible to understand.

I'm glad I finished it so I can put it down and never think about it again.

I falling in love with the cover, the title and the description. It is scream ghost history adventure. And I spent all my time trying really hard to understand what this book about.

First chapter I still can followed our main character. The Nazi's son with nickname sound like Japanesse. Then his friends are Turkish, okay..
And then after he died, I am started struggle to follow the plot. With all stuff mixed from Merlin and end with Egypt mythology. I think this book isnt my cup of tea.

Thank you for my copy Netgalley.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get through this book. It was a DNF for me. From page one I was confused—the writing style and overall plot/characters seemed to be all over the place. I was so excited because the premise was so interesting and the cover is absolutely breathtaking, but in the end, it missed the mark. I think this book has potential, but it needs more work.

(Thank you NetGalley for giving me the chance to review this novel)

I’m really sad to say I just couldn’t get into this novel. The description seemed hopeful, and I was eager to dive in; however, the writing style didn’t resonate with me— at all.

The writing seemed very disconnected, almost like several different people wrote stories and they were tossed together to make a hodgepodge storyline. I found myself having whiplash jumping from one weird story to another, and quickly found myself dreading turning the page.

This was a quick DNF (do not finish) for me— which is a complete rarity as I usually finish any book I pick up…

⭐️/5

Well folks, I can honestly say I've never read a book quite like Voice from the Dead. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started the novel, but it certainly wasn't a jumbled mess of characters, disjointed concepts and awkward time jumps that left me feeling shaken and confused as I read this middle grade story. The premise is good: a 16 year old boy named Tosho dies and finds himself in the world of the dead, inhabited by a soul that is not his own and sent on an epic quest to become a full fledged enlightened spirit. However, this quickly gets lost in the many extra elements that are introduced, often with no warning and no reoccurrence later in the story. I found myself outright bored at some points during the novel. I quite enjoyed many of the characters, especially the sidekicks Elise, Lil'Mon and Alpheus, but found myself wanting more character development and better pacing. I would not recommend this novel to others unfortunately, and for me, it gets 2 out of 5 stars.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC of "Voice from the Dead" by Aster Shock

By the cover of this, I was immediately interested but it wasn't as expected. Extremely Nazi based as the MC's family are Nazis. I didnt feel comfortable reading that and attempting to sympathising with a Nazi, especially given history. As a character, Tosho was annoying and just overall a horrible MC. Some areas felt rushed, some areas were too slow. Pacing was faulty.

Sadly, I didn't enjoy this book. Some people might? But it's a no from me.

The cover and synopsis of this book immediately drew me in: a boy, killed by his bullies, finds himself in a fantastical afterlife being chased by Power Thieves looking to steal his soul and send him into oblivion.

The story itself, however, unfolded in a confusing, haphazard way. It was difficult for me to follow at times and I seriously considered leaving this book unfinished. The flow between chapters was sometimes too stark and I had to reread things frequently to grasp what was happening and with which characters.

Tosho, himself, is not a character I grew to like at all - there was no real arc or development for him. His constant feelings of worthlessness and his self-sacrificing nature deterred from the story with their overwhelming consistency. Tosho has several moments that could have provided some enlightenment and developed him into a relatable character throughout the story, but he remained unchanged.

There are dark themes and consistent mention of Nazis, especially in the beginning. This is something to consider before starting this book.

The building blocks of a great story are here. I truly enjoyed characters like Kemsit and Alpheus, and the magic system has great potential. I laughed multiple times throughout Tosho’s conversations with his soul, especially in the beginning. The hierarchy and explanations of the workings of the afterlife was also very interesting - I really would like more time in the world that was created on these pages.

There are strong redeeming qualities in this book. This truly could be a fantastical adventure that captivates readers, but not in its current state.

I DNF'd this one only a few chapters in. The description sounded great, but right off the bat there a LOT of talk of nazis-- and the main character's father was one. It seems Tosho, the main character, hated his father for that, but there was no mention of nazis in the description of the book, even though it factored HEAVILY into the first chapter (and was the reason Tosho was killed). The writing was also hard to get through. It jumped around a lot, and new information was introduced in a way that was often incredibly confusing. It also read really young, prose-wise-- it read like lower MG. Overall, I was confused from the get-go, and there was nothing about the characters, the prose, the setting, or what I read of the plot so far to keep me reading. Based on the description, it sounded like a great book and I was very excited for it, but I think it would have needed some more heavy editing to get there.

I think the biggest thing for me was that the description referred to Tosho's father being a nazi as "a heinous family legacy," completely skirting over just what the legacy is. When it comes to things like naziism, that needs to be stated up front so the reader can make an informed choice about reading the book. Just including it in a list of trigger warnings isn't enough-- it needed to be in the description. For this, and many other reasons, I set the book aside very early in.

Well, I really don’t know what to make of this book.

If the trigger warning at the start of the book wasn’t any indication, I didn’t know what was in store.

I found the cover to be misleading, thinking I was going to be reading a fantasy of some kind, and the story of a Nazi’s child is not what I expected in the least.

Did not like overall, just confused with the concept.

Quando comecei a ler este livro, pensei isto não vai correr bem. O herói deste livro é invulgar, um filho de um nazi. Acaba por ser difícil criar empatia com a personagem, até porque ele tem alguns comentários bem depreciativos e desnecessários.

Após a morte de Tosho e da sua ida para o além, o livro assume uma complexidade que torna muito difícil acompanhar o enredo. Temos uma mistura de espécies sobrenaturais, deuses míticos de várias culturas, entre outros. Uma autêntica mixórdia.

Infelizmente foi um livro que não funcionou para mim. O ponto positivo foi os capítulos curtos que tornaram a leitura ligeiramente mais rápida.

!! Foi-me cedida uma cópia avançada deste livro em troca de uma opinião honesta.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for proving this e-ARC.

Voice from the Dead has a very intriguing synopsis and the cover is simply gorgeous, on top of that, it was available to read and review instantly. So, obviously I downloaded the book and started reading with a lot of excitement. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm quickly faded and I found myself thoroughly confused with the plot and how the story progressed. I thought that there were too many characters that contributed too little and the world building, though fascinating in the early few pages, quickly escalated to being ridiculously bizarre. I do not DNF books, but I had to force myself to finish this. My intension is in no way to discourage the author, but I do feel that it could have been written in a better way. This was sadly a miss for me.

DNF - writing style very messy, does not flow very well. The cover is beautiful and very eye catching but the content lets the whole book down. I think the author should go back, expend on the content and story and make sure there is not as many holes.

The main thing about this book was that it was so problematic in so many ways. I can understand a child of a Nazi being the main character. I can understand the idea of what the author was trying to do. However, all of these things were done so poorly that it hurt to read. There are a ton of stereotypes, tons of weird added folkloric elements that could have been cool had the writing not been so bad. So, this was kind of a miss for me.

This is only an excerpt - if you're interested, please read my full review here: https://thebooksintheirhands.wordpress.com/2022/04/23/voice-from-the-dead-aster-shock/

Aster Shock clearly has a great passion for writing fantasy and I would hate for them to be disheartened by my comments below – their ideas seemed to leap off the page and I was truly excited by them.

With the historical setting and the bad beginnings that Tosho had had in life, I felt that this book definitely had some great potential to explore the human condition. And I did enjoy thinking about some of the darker themes Aster touched upon; identity, death, the inescapable fate and hopelessness, for example. Unfortunately, for me, the writing only touched upon the topics, it didn’t address them nearly enough. To be honest, they just weren’t very deep.

Take Tosho himself, whose character only seems to develop a little, if at all, despite facing a number of challenges and adventures in the story. Tosho’s character does, however, seem to pick up a few meagre (and cheesy!) catchphrases which have been rinsed and repeated from the other, stereotypical characters. In all, the characters felt flat, lacking the development and personality needed for me to get invested in their fate.

Folklore and mythology seem to be thrown into the narrative haphazardly, which is such a shame. No sooner are we introduced to an interesting setting or character than they are whisked away. This caused me lots of confusion when reading – so much was happening that I found myself struggling to follow the events of the story chronologically and had to keep jumping backwards and forwards a few pages to figure out where Tosho was supposed to be, which really took away from my ability to immerse myself in the story.

As there wasn’t enough information to hear the points that Aster was making at times, I really wish I could have filled in the gaps myself. I’d have loved to peek into the author’s brain and see exactly what the author was seeing… I think this story would best be redone over the course of 2, even 3 books, where the author spends less time introducing a huge cast of characters who contribute little to the story, and more time on fleshing out her big ideas.