Ahoy there mateys!  Though the first mate and I have very different reading tastes, occasionally we do recommend books to each other.  Books the first mate introduced to me included xom-b, holes, and the perks of being a wallflower.  He and I both read the following:

hollow kingdom (Kira Jane Buxton)

We read and talked about the book and I enjoyed his viewpoint so I ordered asked him to write a review.  So you get one from me and a bonus additional review from me crew.  Please note that I write like I talk and the first mate writes like he thinks.  Hope you enjoy!

From the Captain:

I was on the fence about reading this but the idea of the apocalypse told from a crow's point of view kept bringing me back.  The First Mate read this and tipped me over the edge.  It ended up being an okay read.

I did really love the first half of the book.  The set-up of the story and the introduction to S.T. (the crow) and Dennis (the dumb dog) were excellent.  I thought it was a lovely touch that S.T. was a crow that wanted to be a human and just wants to help his human friend, Big Jim.  The humor of Big Jim being a kinda conservative redneck was especially well done given the heart that S.T.'s viewpoint adds to the situation.  I ended up caring about Big Jim because S.T. does.

The highlight of the book was of course the relationship between S.T. and Dennis.  The secondary highlight was the idea of the various ways the animal kingdom communicates in an internet sort of way.  The problem for me is that once the book went from being about helping Big Jim and expanded to helping the domestic animals, I started to lose interest.  Then the author killed off a fun character for NO reason and that irked me.  The book proceeded to shift into animal politics, had info dumps, had several false endings, and had a plot twist dealing with the humans that I found unnecessary.  There were so many plot problems in that second half.  Of course the author can choose to write what they want but it was not what I wanted the story to become.

No regrets but I won't be reading the sequel.  Arrrr!

From the First Mate:

This book is a bit uneven, but I really quite liked it. Considering that I’m a soft-hearted fool when it comes to animal death and this book features a fair amount of animal death and I still found it an enjoyable read, I’d say that my enjoying it was a win.

The Captain had mentioned Hollow Kingdom to me because I have a fondness for unconventional narrators. I like chatty narrators (exposed to Tristram Shandy and Joseph Andrews in my formative literary years) and especially narrators who are weird in some way. S.T., the narrator of Hollow Kingdom, is plenty weird in that he’s a crow that doesn’t want to be a crow, wants to save his best friend from this pesky little zombie apocalypse that’s occurring, and routinely rides around on the stupidest dog in existence. The Captain had cautioned that she’d heard the book was full of scatological, dudebro humor, but that’s not really the case. There’s some scatological events (Dennis the dog “yarfing” and some shitting) but it didn’t come across to me as though it was played for laughs. More in the vein of: these are biological processes and they happen.

At its best, Hollow Kingdom is a novel about identity, friendship, community and responsibility. S.T. starts out just wanting to fix his friend, Big Jim, and continue on his path of becoming a radical mofo. He ends up participating in a war, teaching other animals how to save domestics, and finding community with those he’d previously despised. We meet some awesome characters (Genghis Cat being the most awesome of all) and many of the adventures are quite engaging, tense, and well written.

On the other hand, there are quite a few elements of the novel that simply don’t work. The zombie apocalypse aspect is really superfluous to the rest of the story. If Buxton had simply had humans die out instead of what happens to them, the story doesn’t really change all that much. There’s an infodump about 2/3rds of the way through that tells us what’s going on with the humans, and I just didn’t care. Additionally, some of the characters that were killed off seemed kind of wasteful and really left me scratching my head over whether they were necessary to the story at all. There are also interlude chapters devoted to various animals from around the world and how they’re dealing with what’s going on. I did not enjoy the interludes, except the two that featured Genghis Cat.

Structurally the book feels like it should have ended at about the halfway point. Most of S.T.’s growth has occurred by that point, he’s taught all that he’s going to teach, and there’s a pretty good moment where various characters come together. And then it just kind of continues. There’s a couple of battles, some more deaths (some earned and others feeling very cheap), and then an ending that really felt out of place and unnecessary.

The reason to read Hollow Kingdom is the joy of the base premise. An intelligent crow narrates the apocalypse. The narration was enjoyable enough that I was able to overlook most of the novel’s problems while reading. Thinking back, the problems become very evident when I’m not grinning to myself over the enjoyable narration.

Worth giving a shot if the premise appeals and you’re a fan of chatty narrators. Avoid if domestic animal death cuts you to the quick.