Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Hollow Kingdom

I really wanted to like this book.

When this book was recommended to me, the premise immediately had me hooked. A post-apocalyptic sci-fi featuring a crow named Shit Turd and his loyal dumb dog? Are you kidding? Sign me up. But, I feel like the idea was better than the execution.

Hollow Kingdom brings a unique perspective and much-needed twist to the zombie genre, but it holds itself back with unnecessarily excessive descriptive prose, characters that are hard to connect to, and critical plot points that just don't make sense.

I'm typically all for flowery prose-- it's my favorite. Most of my 5 star reads are written with some degree of flowery prose, but it usually fits the genre and is enough that it contributes some emotion to the story, but short enough that it doesn't pull away from the narrative. Hollow Kingdom took purple prose to the next level, and it felt additionally out of place because of it's genre. I found myself skipping whole paragraphs of the book regularly because it was just a wall of description with no substance to the plot, using the biggest words it could possibly find to describe a simple object. I nearly DNF'd 30% into the book because I found it such a slog to get through. Thankfully, the plot picked up enough that I was able to tolerate it, but this was an issue throughout the whole book.

The main character, S.T., was hard to connect to or care about. In his defense, I can't really relate to a crow in a zombie apocalypse, but I should be able to relate to his feelings of grief, loss of identity, and desire for a purpose. But, those feelings were often surface level or moved past quickly, and so I felt it difficult to care. We don't really get to know the other characters well enough to attach to them, either. There was minor character development, but it didn't make a huge impact. Honestly, I felt myself looking forward to the few short chapters we got from other characters because I found them far more interesting and compelling than S.T.'s perspective.

Finally, there were some plot points that regularly had me going "... Huh?". I feel like I'm usually pretty willing to make crazy leaps in logic for sci-fi and fantasy-- it's fiction, it doesn't have to be realistic. But it does have to make sense within the narrative. Most of the confusion came from the virus itself: where it came from, how it worked, and why it was there.

It's supposed to be a biological virus, like most zombie novels, and in this case sent as a punishment from Mother Nature, but it comes from... Phone screens? I get it, it's a social commentary on technology addiction. But having a naturally created virus that's caused and triggered by technology feels... Disjointed. The book also emphasizes that the virus was a consequence of humanity "missing their chance to evolve" and be better, Nature's way of restoring balance by forcing humans into extinction. But, by the time we get to the end, some of the infected have evolved into not one, but two different "species" of humans as a way to survive the virus? One evolving into a type of man bird, and the other into a man spider? In what I assume is, at the very least, less than 5 years time (since time is not clear)? If the point is that humans missed the opportunity to evolve, that Nature isn't fair, and that evolution takes GENERATIONS, how did they evolve into two new advanced species in such a short period of time? The book tries to explain that this advanced evolution is a last ditch effort at survival and is caused by cancer. Again... What?

I understand the characters are all animals and can't possibly really know what's going on at a molecular level and explain it reasonably to the audience. If the author had just left it at "We're animals, we don't know", I would have been okay with that. But, they went out of their way to deliver that information through a talking parrot and it just... It didn't make sense, and it still doesn't, to me at least.

My final issue with the plot is this:

Dennis' death was pointless and didn't make sense. I'm not upset that it happened; I knew that it would at some point, it was inevitable. I'm upset at the way it happened. He could've died saving the murder during that lake scene, and it would've been a hero's death. But instead, he smelled a UPS truck from inside the compound where they'd been living for weeks, saw that it was swarming with zombies, and just... Went feral on the truck and got eaten to death? Are you joking? I literally put my Kindle down and said "This is the dumbest thing I've ever read." I get that they were trying to make a commentary on a dog's instincts to attack the mailman, but 1) the truck wasn't running, 2) it had been sitting there for weeks (I presume) in an area they regularly patrol, and 3) was swarming with zombies. But you're telling me he hadn't seen it before, and his "natural" instinct to attack the package truck overrode his instinct to avoid predators?? Absolutely pointless death. Meant nothing and didn't make the commentary the author was hoping it would. Cinnamon's death had more meaning than that.

The book wasn't all bad. It was genuinely funny at times (I particularly enjoyed the running joke about squirrels). The communication systems of Aura, Echo, and Web were creative and thought out. My favorite parts of the book were the short chapters we got from some of the other animals-- specifically Genghis Cat and Angus the Highland Cow. Those chapters were witty, had amazing voice, and gave that really unique perspective I was looking for. I loved them.

Overall, though, it was okay. Unique and funny. I understood the points it was trying to make, I just don't think it was well-executed in getting there. I have the second book, Feral Creatures, but I honestly don't know if I'll read it. I might, just to say I did and to see if it clears any of the issues up from the first book, but seeing as it's longer than the first and I barely made it through... Probably not.

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