Stars: 4/5
Format: Kindle Book
Read: November 13, 2011
I'm sad to say I didn't love this as much as the first book. It starts 6 months after Hollowland ended, and started fairly well. And then everything went to pot.
So they end up having to move, like usual, because no place is truly safe. I get that. Remy has to find her younger brother, so they take a detour to Arizona and I get that too. Remy is kind of emotionally damaged, so stuff isn't quite so engaging for the reader. That's fine. And then the author begins picking off characters. Which is also fine. However, the fact that Remy has basically turned into a flat, monotonous character that expresses few emotions and all shallowly is what bothered me.
When people begin to die, Remy doesn't engage. I felt like I was reading the story through a fog, where everything was dampened and not always in a good way. I know she's emotionally damaged, but I felt like this was an extreme that wasn't plausible. So my favorite character is gone, there's a whole slew of new characters, and other characters are mentioned in passing as dying. The whole story is very removed from Hollowland in a way that didn't connect well at all with me.
I didn't feel the characters at all. In fact, I went from Hollowland being my favorite to mourning the characters and story prematurely in Hollowmen. Because whatever spark that was in the first book, was gone from this one. I might also be overly disappointed because I had anticipated this sequel for so long that I sort of built a fairly large expectation, but even looking at it from a neutral stand point, I just did not connect with this book.
However, I will read any subsequent books in this series and hope that Remy will find her way back to us.
Stars: 3/5
Format: ARC Book Won
Read: October 18, 2011
After so much hype and a gorgeous cover, I deeply wanted this book. I was lucky enough to get my hands on an ARC, only to be highly disappointed by the book itself.
The characters are fascinating, if a bit slow to develop, but the plot was the main problem. It felt that the author was overenthusiastic about writing and pours out several plot threads at once, most of which having nothing to do with the main agenda of the book. Tiki steals to care for her family, oh wait she has a mysterious birthmark-tattoo on her wrist, on wow she happens to be inside Buckingham palace and happens to have a ring fall right in front of her, she takes it... and then the writing changes completely. It's like two different writers tried to fit the same book idea and characters into one novel. The writing starts declining from "mediocre" to "childish" to "high schooler trying to write a book and make it big with no regards to prose or character development". It wasn't too bad, until everything is resolved. Then everything magically turns out okay; all that was missing was "and they lived happily ever after". Which, you know, is fine in some circumstances, but felt like silk tacked on to a burlap sack. It just doesn't fit together, no matter what you do.
Even the lore was weak, if nonexistent, to the point where I had no reservations on whether or not the agent even read any faerie books before taking this one on. I wanted to love it so much, even just like it, but in the end I just couldn't. It was a rocky "oh well this is getting better" only to turn to the next chapter and have it decline again.
It was just painful to read, having so much potential gradually get burned to dust. You're welcome to try it, but don't expect too much or your soul will cry a little.
