"Just a girl and her giant stuffed elk head" (CBR15- 01)

[dreadpiratekel]

Link to Cannoball Read blog post here

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher.

I really enjoyed this. I read one of the author's other horror novels The Twisted Ones last year and really enjoyed that one until the end, but then it sort of lost me a little bit. But this one? This one had me all the way through and I felt that it really stuck the landing.

The horror in this was very atmospheric and took some everyday things (Willows! A school bus, like oh my god the school bus. No spoilers but there is a bit with a school bus that just freaked me out) and gave them a little dark and twisted shading. The dark in this was balanced out for me by a very sarcastic sense of humour that ran through the book. Yes, things got pretty goddamn dire at times but in the end dark humour? It kept the book from feeling too heavy, from feeling too much.

There was a reference at one point where the main character of Kara thinks that if this was a horror movie a certain thing would have happened, but then it didn’t. However, there was this part where I was mentally yelling at the characters about a plot point as if I was yelling at a character in a horror movie not to run up the stairs. It seemed really obvious to me, and while I understand it taking a while for the characters to work it out (they were in extreme terror and stress, and I was unnerved but reading this book in my comfy chair in my spare room) it did feel like it took them a bit to get to where they needed to.

But whoa boy, when they got where they needed to go? It was on. The climax of this book was truly great and really leaned into the setting that the author had set up. All the details that went into the setting paid off handsomely.

Not vital to the plot but amusing to me was the fact that our protagonist wrote fanfic (no fandom identified!) going so far as to indicate that she was mentally tough because of her armour being developed during fanfic ship wars, and then at another point thinking dismissively that her ex didn’t even know what name she wrote fic under. Made the character feel more real to me.

The special dessert at the end of this book was the author's note at the end. Sidebar for a second about author notes, I am a sucker for them and when there is a good author note at the end of a good novel? Perfection. This author's note gave a pick behind the curtain of the genesis of the story and one of the character's background. It also contained this quote:

H.P Lovecraft wrote that "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood was one of the most terrifying stories ever written. Before I read it, I assumed that hits probably meant some people in it weren't white, and I began it preparing to troll my eyes a bit.

Good authors note at the end of a good book that dunks on H.P? Yes, please!