Hollow
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of the Vorrh Trilogy comes an epic odyssey following a group of mercenaries hired to escort a divine oracle on a long journey amidst a war between the living and the dead.
Sheltering beneath Das Kagel, the cloud-scraping structure rumored to be the Tower of Babel, the sacred Monastery of the Eastern Gate descends into bedlam. Their ancient oracle, Quite Testiyont--whose prophesies helped protect the church--has died, leaving the monks vulnerable to the war raging between the living and the dead. Tasked by the High Church to deliver a new oracle, Barry Follett and his group of hired mercenaries are forced to confront wicked giants and dangerous sirens on their mission, keeping the divine creature alive by feeding it marrow and confessing their darkest sins.
But as Follett and his men carve their way through the treacherous landscape, the world around them spirals deeper into chaos. Dominic, a young monk who has mysteriously lost his voice, makes a pilgrimage to see surreal paintings, believing they reveal the empire's fate; a local woman called Mad Meg hopes to free and vindicate her jailed son and becomes the leader of the most unexpected revolution; and the abbott of the monastery, influential as he is, seeks to gain even more power in this world and the next.
Rich with action and fantastic creatures, Hollow ushers the reader through a world of ruin where holy secrets are unearthed, art mirrors life through a glass darkly, and death looms over everything. It is B. Catling's most accomplished and gripping tale yet.
A VINTAGE ORIGINAL
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With lush, erudite prose and a large cast of darkly eccentric humans and monsters, this spellbinding slipstream novel from Catling (the Vorrh trilogy) feels like stepping into one of Hieronymus Bosch's playfully macabre paintings—works which are aptly referenced in the novel's second act. In a fantasy revisionist's version of early 16th-century Netherlands, a troupe of ruffians transporting a malformed oracle and led by the fearsome Barry Follett travel across the wilderness and over Das Kagel, a mountain rumored to be the ruins of the Tower of Babel. Meanwhile, a young monk, Dominic, and his curmudgeonly mentor, Benedict, investigate the mysterious emergence of small demonic creatures called Filthlings and Woebegots, and a village woman, Meg, joins forces with unlikely allies to lead a witchy revolution against the Inquisition's oppression. These braided threads grow ever tighter, slowly weaving a tapestry of the surreal and grotesque that culminates in a mostly satisfying climax that balances on the edge of hell. While some readers may grow frustrated with the uneven pacing and perfunctory ending, there's no denying the fascinating otherworldly quality of Catling's richly detailed novel. The result is historic, horrific, and phantasmagoric.
Customer Reviews
Clear effort which bore little fruit.
For historical fiction with a fantastical bent, this feels fairly out of touch. Brian Catling’s common folk seem to be well fed and have many possessions, and the only thing that sets them apart seems to be their poor mannerisms.
Worse than this is the overall feel of the novel. I get the impression that this is meant to be an homage, or at least a reflection of, the works of H. Bosch, and in this regard it falls far short of the mark. Many of Bosch’s
paintings are nightmarish, yes, but nightmares are still dreams, and his paintings capture that. There is nothing dreamlike about Catling’s writing in this book. In fact, in a possible effort to capture the nightmarish aspect of Bosch’s work, Catling seems determined to dredge as many of the most offensive, distasteful, grungy, grimy, or otherwise unpleasant words as he can from the depths of a particularly well used thesaurus and then liberally replace as many nouns and adjectives and verbs and so on as he can with them.
Not only does this fail to take into account the true spirit of Bosch’s work, it fails at capturing even the “nightmarish” aspect of it and leaves the book with a feeling that I can only describe as “gross”.
I have given it two stars because there was some obvious effort put into it, and any book takes time, dedication, and discipline to write. I should also say that the occasional examination of what constitutes “holy” and how we as humans decide what is and isn’t was interesting, if a little lightly touched upon.