Reviewed by Nessa Luna on
I would like to start this review by saying that I absolutely LOVE this series. I fell in love with Miss Peregrine’s when I read it the first time, especially because of all the ‘creepy’ pictures. I was told that it was a horror book, but I ended up not being scared of anything at all, it was more just a nice story with some ‘scary’ pictures added to it.
When Hollow City was announced, I got really excited, because I just wanted to know how the story went on. I had a bit of a reading slump since the end of December, so it was a bit hard for me to get myself to read on, but when I did the book got more and more thrilling as I read.
The Action – This book has quite some action, because Jacob and his group of Peculiar friends are being hunted by Wights and Hollowgast (I caught myself reading Holocaust a lot in the beginning though). Those action moments were the moments that really made me want to continue reading the story, they were just so thrilling!
The Characters + Peculiars – Of course we have the original characters from the first book (Jacob, his Peculiar friends from Cairnholm and Miss Peregrine in bird form). We met a lot of other characters as well, some including peculiar animals, a bunch of Gypsy’s, and a girl whose Peculiar powers made me think of Elsa (from Frozen).
My favourite characters that we met in this book have got to be the animals, the first thing I said was ‘how weird, there’s a talking dog?!’ and then I remembered what kind of book I was reading. I really loved all those animals, especially the emu-raffe!
The Romance – Like the summary says, there’s a bit of a romance going on in this book, and I loved every second of it. I was rooting for them, and I can safely say that I ship it, a lot!
The Pictures – I fell in love with all the pictures in this book! There was one pictures though, that actually scared me; and that was a picture of a clown. I am really scared of clowns, and when I read about a clown in the story, I KNEW that there was going to be a picture of said clown. I read that page with my hand over the picture, and I was happy when I could flip the page!
There was another picture, which had a Dutch sentence on it, I am not sure if it was the same sentence as Millard translated (“From the mouths of our elders comes a fountain of wisdom”), but the part of the sentence that I could read on the picture said “Dit is Hans Worst”, which literally translates to : “This is Hans Sausage”, so that made me laugh a bit. (There was another part of writing on that picture, but I couldn’t read what it said).
The Plot – In this book, the peculiars have to make it to London, to find another Ymbryne and get her to restore their own. I enjoyed reading about their adventure, their meeting with the Gypsy’s, the train journey to London, Jacob’s Peculiar power developing; I just enjoyed it a lot! I think I like this book a bit more than Miss Peregrine’s, to be honest, because this book happens in more places than just Cairnholm.
But there was a plot-twist near the end, that actually made me gasp. I had NEVER expected that and now I’m sitting here with all these feelings, oh my gods!
The Writing – The writing was amazing, just like with Miss Peregrine’s. I really loved Ransom Riggs writing, and I am planning on reading his other book, Talking Pictures, as well.
In the end, I loved this book to bits, and I can’t wait for the next book, because I NEED to know what is going to happen now!
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 31 January, 2014: Finished reading
- 31 January, 2014: Reviewed