A review by corita
Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan

4.0

An Intriguing World:

In Michael J. Sullivan’s book Hollow World, he tells us what the world might look like in 4013.

Living in modern day Detroit, Ellis Rogers builds a time machine, finds out he has cancer, and takes off to the future to find a cure and escape domestic troubles and a boring life.

Ellis intends to go 200 years forward, but he’s catapulted 2000 years into the future, a slight miscalculation. After two millennia, things have changed, a slight understatement. I don’t want to give away too much because I found this world fascinating and think a reader should discover this “brave new world” for herself.

The kicker is that Ellis stumbles upon someone being murdered in a society that has eliminated murder. So much for getting rid of that pesky Y chromosome!

He meets Pax, who arrives with the doctors and seems to be some kind of counselor or arbitrator. When everyone else believes that Ellis has murdered this Hollow World inhabitant, Pax believes Ellis is innocent. They team up and set out to solve the murder mystery and stumble upon a conspiracy.

Things I Liked:

I haven’t read Sullivan’s other books, although after reading this, I’ll check them out. The pacing in the book was slow, but it felt right. The pace fits and mirrors the society and allows the reader to enjoy this new society. A high adventure, breakneck pace wouldn’t have worked as well.

1. The “old time science fiction” feel to the story. It has echoes of H. G. Wells’The Time Machine.

2. Hollow World raises a number of interesting questions, which stay with reader after the book is finished. I enjoy books that invite readers to think. Hollow World comes close to slipping into preachy a few times but nothing too drastic.

3. The world Sullivan creates is fun to experience and a delight to the five senses.

Things That Went Bump

There are couple of things that were pretty big issues for me because I had trouble suspending my disbelief and several times had to reinsert myself back into the story. Be warned spoilers ahead.

Spoiler

1. I bought into the makeshift time machine when Ellis used it, but when his friend Warren, an uneducated neanderthal type, duplicates the machine and ends up in the same time period, I had trouble accepting this possibility. Even with the explanation that he had help building the machine, my disbelief continued to rear its head. Warren’s appearance seems like a clunky plot device to add conflict to a non-violence society.

2. From the moment Warren shows up in Hollow World, a reader knows from dialogue and actions that he’d had a mental breakdown and has shifted further right than he was before he left our world. He was turned into the worst sort of human we can imagine.

Ellis, an intelligent college educated man, turns completely stupid when interacting with Warren. He questions nothing, even blatant abusive behavior. I had to go to great lengths to overlook this flaw. Being told that Ellis grew up with Warren and that in high school Warren saved Ellis from being beaten up wasn’t enough to make me believe Ellis could be so naive about his friend, especially since Ellis knows Warren betrayed him before their time travel adventures. Ellis seems to have left his brain in his time machine.

Even with Flaws, It Was Engaging

In spite of the two flaws, Hollow World is an engaging story.

I think many readers would be more accepting of the two areas that gave me trouble. I’m more of a stickler for logic and reason in science fiction stories than in fantasy stories. If this book were fantasy instead of science fiction, Ellis could have had a spell put on him to trust his friend in spite of the flagrant clues that Warren is a whack job.

I’m giving Hollow World 4 stars, but I if could I’d give it 3.5 because the two flaws were difficult for me to overcome.