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A review by porge_grewe
The Hollow Ones by Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan
2.0
This is undoubtedly a 2-star book. It is also a fascinating read for just how many places it tries and fails, how many seams are on such full display. This is a bounding, bullheaded golden retriever of a book - Its heart is in the right place, it legitimately seems to want to present an anti-racist message while creating an iconic character while providing a satisfying horror experience while making a taut thriller. It fails on all counts, but it really tries!
Before any of its other flaws - This book was published in 2020. African diaspora religions, including the ones referred to in this book are not only extremely played out in horror, but information about them and about African diaspora experiences in the Americas since the Transatlantic slave trade began is so abundant and easily accessed that, if they are to be used at all in a horror setting, it really should be with more thought, consideration, and understanding than this book provides. The original Child's Play film has a more nuanced depiction of , for goodness sake!
What holds it back most is the simplicity of its prose - Simple prose can benefit a book, allowing the reader to inhabit the world more easily by making them as unaware as possible of the artifice of the writer. Here, though, the simplicity only calls attention to the artifice because these people all speak and think in ways which do not feel in the least bit real. Whether it is the main character who speaks as if she is terminally online circa 2010, the other main character who provides the lens for extremely simplified 1960s-era discussion of racism and civil rights, or the figure that this book so clearly wants to be iconic who falls into the trap of characters out of their own time who end up just sounding like a robotic encyclopaedia, absolutely no one speaks or is described in ways which allow the reader to settle into their points of view.
The book comes alive more in its brief chapters which veer fully into horror, though these will be too gory for many, and indeed the sudden shift into well-described brutality in a book which fails so significantly at so many of its other, more well-meaning goals left me with the feeling that it had not earned its brutality - It came across as nasty more than shocking.
And that really was the biggest surprise of the book. I have neglected to mention the authors thus far, but Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro's TV series of The Strain is a horror masterpiece - Uncomplicated in plot, perhaps, but great at setting and maintaining tone, and with enough of GDT's brilliant imagination, direction, and control of colour and image to make up for any issues with writing. It is unfortunate that this incredible creative skill does not transpose to novel writing.
Before any of its other flaws - This book was published in 2020. African diaspora religions, including the ones referred to in this book
Spoiler
Voodoo, Hoodoo, and PaloSpoiler
VoodooWhat holds it back most is the simplicity of its prose - Simple prose can benefit a book, allowing the reader to inhabit the world more easily by making them as unaware as possible of the artifice of the writer. Here, though, the simplicity only calls attention to the artifice because these people all speak and think in ways which do not feel in the least bit real. Whether it is the main character who speaks as if she is terminally online circa 2010, the other main character who provides the lens for extremely simplified 1960s-era discussion of racism and civil rights, or the figure that this book so clearly wants to be iconic who falls into the trap of characters out of their own time who end up just sounding like a robotic encyclopaedia, absolutely no one speaks or is described in ways which allow the reader to settle into their points of view.
The book comes alive more in its brief chapters which veer fully into horror, though these will be too gory for many, and indeed the sudden shift into well-described brutality in a book which fails so significantly at so many of its other, more well-meaning goals left me with the feeling that it had not earned its brutality - It came across as nasty more than shocking.
And that really was the biggest surprise of the book. I have neglected to mention the authors thus far, but Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro's TV series of The Strain is a horror masterpiece - Uncomplicated in plot, perhaps, but great at setting and maintaining tone, and with enough of GDT's brilliant imagination, direction, and control of colour and image to make up for any issues with writing. It is unfortunate that this incredible creative skill does not transpose to novel writing.