The Hollow Places

Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher knows how to get you. Written jump scares, creepy monsters, and always a beloved animal that lives. One can take much comfort knowing the beloved animals, even the taxidermy, survives as one is racing through the book, heart in throat, searching for the next jump scare. While I enjoyed The Twisted Ones, it had an overtone of Lovecraft that I didn’t find scary. Which is fine, a horror story that doesn’t scare me is an accomplishment! The Hollow Places scared me. It’s Narnia meets Alien meets Poltergeist at a bar, get smashed, and coauthor self insert fanfic. Brilliant! Horrifying! We need FANART! Saint Bloodsong of the Beloved Pets

3 stars. No spoilers. This novel was an interesting expansion of Algernon Blackwood\’s novella THE WILLOWS… … a fortunate coincidence for me was that I had just finished reading THE WILLOWS before starting THE HOLLOW PLACES and I would recommend that others to do the same… Kara is minding her Uncle Earl\’s curiosity museum while he recuperates in hospital from a surgery… On her first week at the helm, someone punched a hole in the museum\’s back wall… Kara\’s friend Simon makes the hole bigger while trying to repair it and they see… … a vast corridor leading to an old rusted door. When they finally get the door open they enter into another world within our world… … within the four concrete walls is a river with a multitude of willows… evil willows as the two will soon learn… I could only picture a wet, foggy warehouse full of willows… it was really hard for my mind to place a whole river inside a warehouse-like structure… With a little restructuring, this novel could have been good but as it is there are a lot of unanswered questions. Although the people were well developed, the setting wasn\’t… causing me to feel like I was in a gondola on a Disneyland ride. There were crossover things from THE WILLOWS like the Danube, the boatman, the otter, the mysterious funnels in the ground and of course the willows. Not a bad novel just not great.

I\’ve been waiting too long for this book to devour it in one sitting, but here I am. From the start this book delighted me. I immediately felt a kinship with Carrot and enjoyed all her observations and sensibilities. I think that\’s why when the horror began, I was sucked in so hard. I don\’t want to rehash the plot but I have a few observations that may include spoilers so stop here if you don\’t want that. I loved the contrast between the banal and the absurd. I loved how the terror of another world completely took the piss out of a normally life-wrecking event like a divorce. I enjoyed how it basically put things into perspective. And I deeply appreciated the ending, because even something as traumatic as almost being killed by otherworldly monsters just beyond the thin skin of reality doesn\’t make the world stops turning. People live their lives at ground zero of some really traumatic stuff because it\’s familiar. I can\’t praise this book enough. The only think that offset me is the occasional political commentary but I can look past that in Leigh of such a brilliant and insidious tale of horror.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit I am not a fan of the horror genre at all. But I absolutely love T. Kingfisher\’s writing (and also her work as Ursula Vernon), so I\’ve read both \’The Twisted Ones\’ and this novel, \’The Hollow Places.\’ I greatly enjoyed both of them — despite being afraid to read them right before going to bed. Both novels feature normal protagonists in seemingly normal situations who deal with everything suddenly going sideways into terrifying. Both protagonists have interesting people who help them and are fully fledged and interesting individuals in their own right. Also, both protagonists have pets who help (and sometimes hinder) them, but are very lovable and LIVE. I do not like writers who sacrifice pets to make a point about how horrifying the bad guys are — and T. Kingfisher ensures the pets come through. Highly recommend this novel — and all of this author\’s work!

T. Kingfisher is an automatic buy for me; the literal second that I see she\’s written something new, I click pre-order, and then, months later, I get a book I\’d forgotten about, and its like Christmas and birthdays and surprise pay raises all at once. This one forced me to read it, all at once, in a single day, which is not an uncommon phenomenon for a Kingfisher book. And I can honestly say it was a perfect way to start off October, and that it was one of the most profoundly disturbing books that I have read to date. Simply marvelous

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