The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
/The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
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This is one weird, weird novel. It’s so weird. It’s so wonderfully, chillingly, horrifyingly weird.
I loved it.
After her divorce, Kara moves into her Uncle’s place to help run his eccentric museum. The Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy is full of just that-lots and lots of taxidermy and curiosities. To keep her busy, Kara spends her days updating the museum's catalog of exhibits and helping customers in the gift shop. When her uncle suffers a knee injury, Kara is left to run the museum on her own. After a long day, Kara notices a hole in the drywall. Irritated that a customer damaged the wall and didn’t tell anyone, Kara asks her neighbor Simon to help her patch it up. Instead of a simple fix, the two discover an impossible hallway behind the wall that extends beyond the building’s dimensions.
At the end of the mysterious hallway? A portal to a different dimension. That’s right, an entire world exists within the walls of the museum. Kara and Simon enter the mysterious world and discover a vast expanse of land that can’t possibly exist. Cryptic messages are found from former explorers within structures that seem like storm shelters but appear to be portals to other worlds. The more Kara and Simon explore, the more deadly and terrifying the world becomes.
Readers, this book is amazing. Absolutely engrossing and thrilling. This is another one to add to my “Read In One Sitting” list because I just had to know what was happening next. T. Kingfisher crafted an impossible world that at the surface seems beautiful with it’s miles of willow trees, but is actually a horrifyingly deadly place full of nightmares.
Kara and Simon are great characters. They are both completely relatable and their reactions to everything that was being thrown at them felt incredibly real. Kara is licking her wounds after her divorce and her devastation is quickly forgotten as soon as she discovers the other world. Slight spoiler, her ex calls her after she has a harrowing experience with the other world and her being truly pissed off that he is inconveniencing her with a phone was just great to watch. There is no romance between Kara and Simon, they’re just great friends. The two of them have a great dynamic between them and their mutual freakouts and fierce protectiveness of each other made for a great read.
The Glory to God Museum and Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy is a character itself. I loved the descriptions of the different animals and the displays. The museum receives random donations from all over the world and Kara’s descriptions of some of the boxes were just hilarious. Uncle Earl also owns the coffee shop next door where Simon works, or the building at least, and the fact that they pay rent in coffee? Gotta love a small town.
This is my favorite type of horror novel-an almost quiet, constant, tense and horrifying monster that you never really see. You can feel how scared Kara and Simon are but they hold that sense of disbelief because these events shouldn’t be happening. The unexplained horrors found within the willows are revealed slowly and deliberately creating a constant tension. I needed a muscle relaxer after this one-my shoulders were pretty damn tight.
I loved this one, truly, truly loved it. I haven’t read Kingfisher’s other book The Twisted Ones yet but it’s already on hold at the Library. If you’re looking for a creepy book that still has some lightness to it, definitely give this one a try.
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