The Hollow Places

This is a seriously creepy book. I love the Wonder museum and Simon and uncle Earl, but the willow world is a place full quiet menace. You know in that world nothing is what it seems and the most innocuous thing is going to eat you. T. Kingfisher is such a great storyteller I love the world's and adventures she is able to create and fill with wonderful characters, those you love those you hate and those seriously twisted ones (please read the twisted ones). I would recommend The Hollow Places, it is a fantastic book and well worth you time and money

It's not really 'horror' but rather a story where the protagonist finds herself entering a strange and increasingly scary 'other world'. Great characters and a plot that moves quickly but takes enough time to paint an immersive world - or rather two worlds. Highly recommended.

I liked the first half (even if it’s nothing super new - but hey, u cannot reinvent everything that already exists). The second half of the book gets a bit boring as it’s pretty much stuff that keeps repeating all over and over again - mixed with coffee.. I mean .. u got a kind of journal u bring back from another world and don’t bother reading it straight away / or opt for your friend to tell u what’s written up. not really a deep / well thought through story - could have been wrapped up in under 200 pages (for what it is - wants to tell). It’s not super creepy or horror, however uncomfortable, especially considered u get stuck forever or eaten alive by what’s very hard to describe by the author herself (no pun intended - I like being imaginary). I enjoyed the humor that’s mixed into the dark atmosphere, probably the only thing u can do before going completely nuts. it’s worth a read if u r into sliding, parallel universe and soft sci-fi.

This book was riveting, it got to a point it was so creepy, so weird and unnerving that I needed to stop reading. But I couldn't it's just too good. I read it far too quickly. This was an amazing story. It reminds me of the weirdness of Jeff Vandermeer. Every now and then you read something wonderful that you won't forget.

Well now, I'm half way between what the **** did i just read and WOW, this was such a fun book but it had this unsettling energy to it while you read it, Kara and Simon were such amazing characters and the world they entered was terror inducing, so quiet and empty but also not as empty as it seems and thats half the terror not knowing where the Monsters are or even what they look like, I did love The Wonder Museum its sounded like such a fun and quirky place to visit. But no to the portal to another world thank you very much I am happy right here 😊.

When I picked this book up, I couldn't put it down. I was totally engrossed. The characters feel like real people. The whole story feels very real. I feel like I want to take a trip to this museum and take a long hard look a particular wall. Cosy Horror. Haunted house. Comedy and quick witted quips. Freaky deaky stuff going on. I'm off for a well earned coffee and a Chinese 👍

Great happy with thus stunning book.

Firstly, I’ll level up, I read this on the back of ‘What Moves the Dead’, ot 100% sure exactly WHY I bought that apart from it bring a random Amazon suggestion but I enjoyed that riff on Poe’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ immensely! And …Yes! I’ll write a review soonest, but back to task… For Me, myself and I, I really do prefer my Machenesque, Blackwoodian, Mythosque and Poesque riffs to be set in the past, I just do it ramps up the spookiness and, for me, at least, the relatability. My ability to relate to the (now) compulsory inclusion of a non-binary supporting character doesn’t. I actually liked Simon, a lot, but apart from the ability to have a secondary lead alongside the female Prime Jars, WITHOUT there being any you-know-what, seemed almost gratuitous. It’s ALMOST as if the attempt was to bring-in the YA audience as well as the Lovecraftian, seamlessly and it doesn’t (quite) come off. Close though. Truth to tell, I don’t remember reading a Titan Publication I didn’t enjoy and I DID enjoy this rehash, and ‘brought-into-the present days’, ‘The Willows’, itself abrogated by Blackwood’s ‘The Man who Loved Trees’ but, from this readers perspective, less contemporisation and MORE ELDRITCH spookiness would have elevated it to a 5. Mrs ‘Kingfisher’ aka Ursula Vernon is a very gifted writer, her prose flows effortlessly but I’m a horror and fantasy reader not a comedy addict so there’s a half point dropped there. I’m being hyper critical because this is a review and because it didn’t creep me out, summon chills, put me in awe of the timeless horror of the eldritch powers or leave me afeared of being home alone but i DID enjoy it, no, really I did but slightly darker, more atmospheric, ramping up the shivers and it would have verged on excellence. Id HONESTLY like to read a series using these characters, in this setting but it needs darkening. The last sentence indicates the author is considering this and I hope she does, there’s enough here for substantive expansion, perhaps reincarnating other classic macabre works? Caw caw spoke the Raven? Id recommend it TO FRIENDS but it’s not a chill-fest, thst would have been misleading. Still… Another winner from Titan - always a guarantee of entertainment

This was an amazingly, delightfully creepy book! The older I get, the less I seem to enjoy horror books, especially the gore and guts kind of horror. I still enjoy the atmospheric, psychological horror, but I find it hard to find good book that don't repeat the same tired clichés or manage to completely botch the ending. I'm glad I picked up The Hollow Places, because this book delivered. I think the best part about it is how slowly it develops the creep factor. We start in this wonderful little museum of improbable and impossible things that might look scary and unusual, but are, most of them fake. And our protagonist is someone who grew up in that museum. Who knows every nook and cranny of that building, who played among the display cases and hugged the stuffed animals as if they were her childhood friends. To Kara, or "Carrot" how her family and friends call her, the museum is the safest place on earth. This is a refuge when her family life is shattered by a divorce. A chance to regroup and start over. And the author takes time to set the stage and introduce us to Kara and her uncle, as well as the museum itself. It's done in such a way that as a reader, I was in love with the little building as well. I was feeling warm and safe there. So when creepy and unexplained things start happen in this safe place, it completely knocks the ground from under your feet along with the protagonist. The horror of what's happening has an even bigger impact because it is intruding into this safe zone. The author also introduces the horrors of the Willows very progressively. At first, it just looks like a slightly creepy, but ultimately benign world. Yes, it's flooded. Yes, there are bunkers everywhere, but no people. Yes, the willows are strange, but they are just trees, right? As more an more bizarre things happen to our protagonists, as the level of horror slowly ramps up, so did my blood pressure. I felt for them. I felt with them, especially after the school bus and their realization that they lost their bunker, and that they are possibly stuck in this weird no-man's land forever. I loved Kara. She is funny, she is a mess, but she is so relatable. Maybe because I've been in her shoes, with a messy divorce and a husband that acted exactly the same way. Yes, Carrot was slightly too stupid to live when it came to one particular object, but I can let it slide, because I liked everything else about her. And Simon! If I had to get lost in a weird in-between place of existence with somebody, he would be my first choice. He is cool under pressure, and funny, and also relatable. And special shoutout to Beau, the bestest, most adorable cranky cat in literature. As I mentioned, the horror in this slowly builds up and finds its culmination when the safe place suddenly becomes unsafe. Unlike other horror books I've read recently, the author didn't drop the ball here. The resolution is satisfying and the ending is everything I wanted it to be. And even though our protagonist win in the end, they are left with physical and emotional scars, which is also very logical and realistic. All in all, this was a very enjoyable book. I will definitely recommend it to my friends and I will check out other books by this author. Heck, I already told my husband he absolutely needs to read it.

Genauer gesagt hatte ich erste Anzeichen leichten Unbehagens bei der Erwähnung von Flüssen, Booten auf Flüssen, Inseln in besagten Flüssen, Weiden auf besagten Inseln in besagten Flüssen, und eben Ottern - den großen Exemplaren, die an die zwei Meter lang werden und schon mal mit einem im Wasser treibenden Menschen verwechselt werden können, schon bevor ich "The Hollow Places" gelesen habe. Denn einige Wochen, bevor ich endlich T. Kingfisher für mich entdeckte, las ich Algernon Blackwoods "The Willows" (Die Weiden), und musste hinterher feststellen, dass mir das Buch ein nicht näher zu definierendes, jedoch umso nachhaltigeres Unbehagen beschert hatte. Wundervoll. Als ich dann einen Blick darauf warf, warum es in "The Hollow Places" geht, fiel dieser Blick eigentlich nur auf das Wort "willows", was sofort eine Trigger-Wirkung hatte. Hatte die Autorin etwa... Ja, sie hat. T. Kingfisher hat sich Algernon Blackwoods Geschichte genommen, bzw. sich Grundzüge daraus beherzt geliehen, und in einen ebenso atemberaubenden wie atmosphärischen Roman eingewoben, der deutlich die Handschrift einer Autorin trägt, von der ich in Zukunft bitte jedes Buch für das erwachsene Lesepublikum haben möchte (T. Kingfisher schreibt unter einem anderen, ihrem eigentlichen Namen, auch Kinderbücher) und gleichzeitig für diejenigen Leser, die Blackwoods Geschichte kennen, jede Menge Aha-Momente bereithält. Man muss das Original, also "The Willows", nicht kennen, um trotzdem ein riesiges Vergnügen an "The Hollow Places" zu haben, aber schaden kann es nicht. Es handelt sich dabei, das ist vielleicht wichtig für Leser, die auf Gemetzel und jede Menge Blut stehen, nicht um eine Horrorgeschichte, jedenfalls nicht, wenn man Horror mit den vorgenannten Zutaten verbindet, sondern um "speculative fiction", in der das Grauen subtiler aufgebaut wird. Und auch "The Hollow Places" ist kein Horror-Schocker, wenn auch T. Kingfisher die ein oder andere Szene zu bieten hat, die man besser nicht vor dem Essen zu sich nimmt (und auch nicht unmittelbar danach). Es ist aber auch, zum Glück, auch sonst völig anders als Blackwood. Denn anders als der genannte Herr hat T. Kingfisher nämlich hat etwas, was dem zumindest in seinen Geschichten völlig fehlte: sie hat Humor und ein Herz für ihre Protagonisten, und das macht den ganz, ganz großen Charme von "The Hollow Places" aus. Die Protagonistin "Carrot" und ihr schwuler Freund Simon sind zwei, die man unbedingt kennnenlernen möchte - vorzugsweise im Kuriositätenmuseum von Carrots Onkel und lieber nicht auf der anderen Seite von dessen Außenwänden. Immer wieder bricht man während des Lesens ganz unvermittelt in hysterisches Gekicher aus, genau wie die Protagonisten, denen als Reaktion auf den Irrsinn, der sie ebenso unvermittelt heimsucht, gar nichts anderes übrigbleibt, wenn sie nicht den Verstand verlieren wollen. Und es ist wie gesagt, trotz allem und jedem ein einziges Vergnügen, mit den beiden die "Hollow Places" zu erkunden, auch wenn einem, sollte man nicht gerade nervös kichern, schon mal die Kinnlade in die Knie fällt. Spätestens beim Otter, um das mal abzurunden, war das bei mir der Fall. Jetzt warte ich sehnsüchtig auf "A House with Good Bones", T. Kingfishers neuen Roman, in einer Ausgabe, die ich mir leisten kann. Und darauf, dass irgendein Verlag mal bitte auf die Idee kommt, nicht nur die YA-Bücher dieser Autorin (jaja, die gibt es auch noch) ins Deutsche zu übersetzen, sondern eben auch ihre, nennen wir es dann doch eben so, subtil-humanen Horror-Romane.

This book scared me so badly I had to take breaks to calm down. At one stage I was so freaked out that when I got a start from one line that I physically threw the kindle across the bed. Kingfisher (Ursula) is very, very good at writing a horror story where the characters are as smart as the reader - which makes it much harder hitting when they do what you would do in their shoes... I love horror, and I am by no means a wimp! This book scared me more than anything in years, and I enjoyed it immensely.

The story wasn't too good, but a book is always a nice gift.

I loved it. Both funny and terrifying. I'll be getting more from Ursula Vernon.