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Thursday, October 29, 2020

Review: The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

Author
: T. Kingfisher
Publisher: Gallery
Publication date:  October 2020
 
Pray they are hungry.

Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more you fear them, the stronger they become.

With her distinctive “delightfully fresh and subversive” (SF Bluestocking) prose and the strange, sinister wonder found in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, The Hollow Places is another compelling and white-knuckled horror novel that you won’t be able to put down.
 

After not really liking The Twisted Ones, I was a bit hesitant to go into The Hollow PlacesBut, I always like to give an author a second or third chance.  The Hollow Places features Kara, who finds a hole in her uncle's shop wall that leads to another world.  When she finds cryptic clues to previous visitors, she realizes the world she came from may be in danger.  

I wanted to love this one.  And while I did like it slightly more than The Twisted ones, I was still ultimately disappointed. The characters were supposed to be in their 30s, I believe. But they acted and spoke like they were in high school.   They also kept making dumb decisions.  I liked the idea of the hole that they found and what they encountered there, but I'm still not completely sure I "get" what it was.  In the last third of the book, I started feeling like I was reading yet another disappointing ending to the latest Stephen King novel. It wasn't creepy, spooky or thrilling.  It was OK.  Give it a try.  Maybe you'll like it more than I did.
 


1 comment:

shelleyrae @ book'd out said...

A shame but thankyou for sharing an honest opinion