Review by librarymouse - The Hollow Places

librarymouse 's review for:

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

5.0

adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Holy shit, I loved this book! As a person living in this world, and loving the people I've grown up with, who were the adults in my life when I was a child, and who have complicated and sometimes conflicting world views, but who are also fundamentally good, Kara's relationship with her Uncle Earl, as the foundation of the book, was wonderful. I also deeply love Kara's relationship to the museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, both in its role as space and character. Some of the decisions the characters made (marking their island with a stick, going into the world of the willows to begin with, etc.) felt like bad life choices to make in a horror novel, but as I have to remind myself often, characters aren't aware of the genre they're in. Their actions wouldn't be out of place if the world they were going into was wonderland. They don't get to know in advance that they're entering a world that bears them ill will (with the exception of the warning in the form of the corpse they find locked inside the bunker they enter the willow world through, but one person's horror is another person's home as already proven by the sense of comfort and home Kara finds in the Wonders museum)

I enjoyed the banter between the characters and the fact that they don't (and can't) take the terror too seriously. The phrasing and voice of the characters makes a lot of sense after seeing T. Kingfisher talk. The writing in this book matches her speech and humor very well. The setting plays a major role in how the characters interact with each other and cope with their circumstances, turning it into a character-like antagonist. I enjoy the way Kingfisher blurs the line between character and setting in horrible ways, integrating those Kara and Simon find in the willow world into their setting as a way to introduce the creeping dread of the place, and to build the horror bit by bit. I also found it refreshing to have a main character in an adventure novel, who is older

Content Warnings