Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Hollow Kingdom

This was… an experience. I went into Hollow Kingdom expecting a strange, unique take on a zombie apocalypse. It was sort of like that, but it was really more of a character study of our dear friend, Shit Turd.

Crows are pretty intelligent creatures, so it was interesting to get a bird’s eye view (harhar) of the very bizarre downfall of humankind. Good ol’ S.T. starts out a die-hard fan of humans. His whole journey even starts off as a quest to find a cure for his beloved human, Big Jim. But as he ventures out into the world gone to shit, he embraces his crow-ness more and more. I never thought I’d be so interested in the character development of a crow, but here we are.

Where Buxton sort of lost me was with the meandering plot. It was at times more of an exploration of the natural world, how it can function and thrive without the interference of humans, and a love letter to the earth. I can read that and enjoy it, but then we’d be thrown back into the action and plot. You know how sometimes characters are just there to help the plot move along? In Hollow Kingdom, it was almost like the plot was only there to help the character development and overall message move along. I’m probably making about as much sense as this storyline did 🤷🏻‍♀️

Anyway, kudos to the author for endearing a crow to me, along with a thick but heroic bloodhound, a bald eagle (used to raise chickens in WA, not usually a fan of these particular raptors), and other critters. I particularly enjoyed the couple of chapters on Genghis Cat.

Thanks to one of my sweet kiddos in our library’s tween book club who requested books from an animal POV, which inspired my own choice to read this—on my own. Not for kids. Definitely not for kids.

Quotes:

“This bird-with her buttercup-yellow eyes and perfectly alabaster head plumage, her voluptuous shuttlecock tail, and the rich chocolate of her body-rendered me a statue. She was flawless in feather, strong and savvy. She looked at me-right fucking at me!-with that iconic regal ex-pression, daffodil-yellow eye absorbing and adjudicating with a sharpness rivaled only by her talons. Bald eagles are majestic as fuck.”

“The tiny sparrow darted through a sky of birds and was suddenly hurtling alongside the eagle and me.
‘Don't worry,’ he said in a jittery whisper. ‘I believe in you.’ They were tiny words from a tiny bird, but perhaps sometimes all you need is a speck of encouragement, an acorn of belief.”

Content Warnings

anomieus's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is a horror novel.

But...

It’s also a wonderfully creative and exuberant novel of the zombie apocalypse as seen through the ever-observant eyes of the salty, intrepid crow named S.T. and his faithful companion Dennis the Dog. It is, in turn, parts whimsy, sobering social commentary, classic-zombie-horror, and love letter to the natural world.

When the human world around pet crow S.T. and his housemate, Dennis the bloodhound, seems to start disintegrating, he’s mystified by what might be wrong with his human, Big Jim - particularly when his eyeball falls out.

“Big Jim’s eyeball fell out. Like, fell the fuck out of his head. It rolled onto the grass, and to be honest, Big Jim and I were both taken aback.”

S.T. realizes that his human best buddy has taken a turn for the worse and so he sets out with Dennis to see what’s what with the world and how to fix it, and Jim. His adventures are fraught with danger as he encounters the horrors of raging zombie humans and warring animals as the struggle for survival spreads throughout his city and around the world. This is a horror novel of survival in a disintegrating world cleverly mixed with the quixotic doings and nostalgic musings of a crow, a dog and all the new critters and life they meet along the way.

“So there we were. A rejected crow with an identity crisis partnering a bloodhound with the IQ of boiled pudding. We were perhaps the most pathetic excuse for an attempted murder on the face of the earth.”

The absolutely hysterical inner thoughts of the anthropomorphized S.T. and his interactions with other crows and species, all of whom are trying to figure out what to do with this new ‘MoFo’ (that’s people)-less world had me in laugh-out-loud stitches.

“Bald eagles are majestic as fuck.”

But to be clear, these moments of dry, droll corvid humour are mixed with truly tense, bloody horror as the humans tear into everything in their path. There are moments of sincere soul-searching and real wisdom about the nature of humanity and its appalling and narcissistic tendency towards inevitable destruction in this surprisingly spirited novel of the animals and world we will leave behind.

“Sometimes I have the thought that a lot of species are hardwired to refuse to listen to warnings. And that's how they end up extinct.”

If this is the world that survives our self-annihilation, I am perfectly content with that.

Content Warnings

novelyon's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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corriejn's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful medium-paced

5.0

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ermw0's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This book has a lot going on, which sometimes hindered my enjoyment of it. S.T. is such a fun character to follow, but his voice can get a bit exhausting when there is a quip or joke literally every line. Up until the end I felt the plot kept moving at a steady pace but then it got a little bloated. I laughed, I cried (yes really), and fell in love with this crow and his dog. A unique take and perspective on the zombie apocalypse with an very cool origin for the disease that ravages humanity. There's so much heart in this and at its core is such a strong book, but I think the humor and the overstuffing of events towards the end (as well as the ending itself) took away a star from being a favorite for me.

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zpitts's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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