Book Review: Hollow City
Book: Hollow City
Author: Ransom Riggs
Genre: Young Adult/Fiction/Fantasy
Summary: The extraordinary journey that began in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom. Hollow City draws readers into a richly imagined world of telepathy and time loops, of sideshows and shape-shifters - a world populated with adult "peculiars," murderous wights, and a bizarre menagerie of uncanny animals. Like its predecessor, this second novel in the Peculiar Children series blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience. -Quirk Books, 2014.
Hollow City is the sequel to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. In it, we find Jacob and the Children trying to escape the wights and hollows after rescuing their headmistress. Time is running out for Miss Peregrine as the longer she stays a bird, the less human she becomes. Jacob and the others must find a way to save her before the wights try to get her back.
I found this sequel...okay. It's not terrible, but it's not amazing either. I had gone into it thinking that this was the second of a trilogy, only to be confused by an ending that had many more plot lines open than closed. I looked online to find that there are six books in this series. Not three, but six. I'm sorry, but this series is not worth six books. Three is good, six is stretching it.
This book in particular seems like a waste of plot. The payoff is nonexistent. It sets up more problems to be resolved that could take away from the main plot.
I was really disappointed that I spent four hundred pages on a plot point that had zero payoff and, to me, feels like a giant 'gotcha!' situation that I neither signed up for nor appreciated.
It may have explained a few minor points, but it doesn't resolve any major points, therefore giving birth to my point that I think this book wasted valuable plot development. Literally, only one character goes through a form of a character development arc, but it's not even the main character! Jacob is still the same person he was in book one, with a little more control over his gift and a little wiser. He might have had more growth if Riggs hadn't decided to use that eleventh hour 'gotcha!' plot device.
I wasn't planning on reading more of the series to begin with, but after this, I'm definitely not reading more. The writing is fine and there are some more "adult" moments in the story, but I just can't forgive what was done to the main plot. I'm truly disappointed.
I give Hollow City a C+.
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