Rating:

Pray They Are Hungry

Author: T. Kingfisher

A lot of things have gone wrong for Kara recently. She’s just divorced her cheating ex. The next options were either to move in with her argumentative mother or go back to her middle-of-no-where hometown and move in with her Uncle Earl and help run his Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy. She chose good old Uncle Earl, who despite his eccentricities and firm belief in Big Foot, has always had a place for her. And darn it, if she doesn’t feel at home and happy with his dusty collection, back with the bad taxidermy that would give other people nightmares. She’s even decided to start cataloging the terrible stuff, just as Uncle Earl has gone out of commission for knee surgery. So, now it’s just Kara, the fishnet wearing barista next door, Simon, and a box of all new stuff to catalog, including a weird corpse-otter sculpture. It’s all quite coffee chats about Simon’s one weird eye (which is from the twin he apparently cannibalized in the womb) and carefully curated Excel sheets about what taxidermy resides on what shelf, until some stupid tourist knocks a hole in the wall that just so happens to lead to another dimension. Then, of course, Kara and Simon must go through the hole . . . because . . . you know . . . you just do. . .

Queue creepy, queue weird, queue evil Narnia and creatures in the mist and sarcasm and the stuff of hallucinations and last-minute showdowns and the kind of visceral bizarro horror that only Kingfisher can craft in her warped imagination. Ah, *contented sigh.* It’s just beautiful.

I never, ever thought a book would make me feel all kinds of cozy feelings about a stuffed moose head and a dusty museum of oddities full of bad taxidermy. That’s a first. Before the action even starts, though, we’re there with Kara and we’ve established a sense of her world, her soul. We understand what her happy place is, why this nostalgia and feeling of belonging and returning is so strong, so essential as she licks her wounds and contemplates the betrayal of her failed marriage. We love this place too, and we have an emotional connection with a stuffed and mounted moose head. That, in and of itself, is some kind of dark literary magic.

By the time Kara and Simon walk through the wall and emerge on the other side, we’re already invested in their characters and are ready to believe in the eeriness and experience the fear. For those of you who have read the Narnia books (or at least the first one) you may recall the very brief moment depicting a wood between worlds, filled with reflecting pools. In this adaptation, though, the world is a grey ocean, filled with fog, banks of islands covered with ominous willows. Interspersed among these islands are the doors, or portals, to other worlds. Where the willows get their roots in, the creatures from the mists can travel. These creatures, only ever half seen, are the true horrors. They are called by fear, by thought. If they are hungry, you are lucky. Your ending might be quick. But if not . . . well, let’s just say that they get inventive.

Unlike C.S. Lewis’ peaceful portal world, returning to the same world, through the same portal, is not necessarily possible. Here, the scenery shifts. The doors move. The willows watch. Things stalk you. Kara and Simon try to remain level-headed, finding clues from those who have gone before. As they attempt to track their way back, they work to offset each other’s breakdowns, gather more knowledge, and glean information from the creature’s living leftovers, including one very memorable man who sheds light on what happens if the creatures find you and you survive them not being hungry.

The story morphs between moments of action and creeping fear, elaborating on the idea of parallel worlds and the terrifying plane that might exist between them, a plane where interdimensional beings hunt those unlucky enough to arrive in the “in between.” The story, however, is about more than surviving the “in between” world, with the halfway point of Hollow Places bringing us a new twist and set of problems.

My only quibble is an old one. The characters never go deep with their mortality. They never question the meaning or permanence of a very real death that stalks them, and this seems quite strange to me. Is this not the moment to think beyond the trivial? Kara distracts herself with the jingle of “John, Jacob, Jingleheimer Schmidth.” Before, during, and after tense moments there are many barbed comments about anyone who believes in religion, yet the characters never stop to think about what they believe will happen to them in the very real event of their death or (worse) living undeath. If they do not believe in God or any religion, fine then, but what? It takes the realism out for me that there is no acknowledgement, no contemplation. Perhaps the author thought this would make the story too dark, too sad . . . but . . . we were already going pretty darn dark, let’s go all the way! This is horror, and I am invested in these people. I don’t want them to hold out this last moment from me, even if the admission from them is just a “I don’t know what I think” is going to happen if I die / get stuck in living undeath? The fact that they didn’t think about it at all though or blow off the idea seemed unnatural, and not in the form of denial, just in the form of sloppy plotting. Perhaps I’m alone in this though? But . . . if faced with the ultimate horror, aren’t you going to think very much about the hereafter?

Otherwise, the plotting and pacing was smooth, the ideas exquisite and nefarious, the juxtaposition between seen and unseen horrors, just right. The balance between what is revealed and what remains a delectable mystery is also well portrayed. This would have been a five star for me, if only the characters had just pulled their mental veils all the way back to grapple with all the mysteries of life and death instead of ultimately leaving some of the blinders still firmly in place. You can’t face death and not think about God, about the ultimate meaning of everything. You can’t face true horror and sing childhood ditties in lieu of facing ultimate meaning.

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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