I am unsettled and everything is perfect.
I didn’t know that Kyrstal Sutherland found the technology from the movie Inception, but apparently she did because House of Hollow has the faerie-lore nastiness of my wildest dreams. Y’all know I love anything to do with creepy fae (eyes too big, fingers too long, unhinged morality, playing with time) and she NAILED it with this modern twisted faerietale about three weird sisters entwined with darkness and death magic! 10 years ago, sister Iris, Vivi, and Grey disappeared from an Edinburgh street only to turn up a month later with identical hooked scars on their throats and no memory of what happened to them. After their return, their hair turns white, their eyes black, and the general eeriness of their demeanour causes rifts and deaths wherever they go. When now-famous fashion-designer Grey goes missing once again, Iris must join with her estranged rocker chick sister Vivi to find her before it’s too late – and a horned man follows in their footsteps. I gave this book a 5/5 stars, but I am incredibly biased towards this horror-faerie trope. If you liked Raven Boys by Maggie Steifavter, The Call by Peadar ó Guilin, or Cruel Prince by Holly Black, this is the book for you.
It’s hard to speak about anything in this book because literally anything I could say is a spoiler, so I’ll try my best to keep the mystery! I don’t feel like I can do this book justice by merely gushing about how much I loved it, because Sutherland uses language to her full advantage in a way I’ve never read before, Her choice of words invokes and enhances the unsettling atmosphere of the book. Her air isn’t humid, it “smelled sodden, bloated with damp” (p. 11). A bad smell is written as “a stench exploded out onto the street, soaking the air. It hung from the branches of the trees like necklaces” (p.82). Walking through Edinburgh, Iris describes “the light here was old, borrowed from another century” (p.180). HOW ARE THESE REAL!? I hope one day to be as good at writing description as Krystal Sutherland is. Damn.
The family aspect was the perfect amount of grounded and twisted, focusing heavily on the sister-trio dynamics but also on the relationship the girls have with their mother, Cate. The familiarity juxtaposed with the unfamiliar, the fear, and the secretive nature of Grey added so many layers of connection that feel grounding but tense to the reader. The death of their father and his insistence on them not being real lays such morbid groundwork that weaves around your mind while you watch these weird and wild girls.
This book also did a great job of liminal spaces, which are one of my favourite things in fiction and in real life! ‘Liminal’ means ‘in-between’, so you have your dawn, your dusk, your New Year’s Eve, but also physical spaces – you know, like airports. I love being in liminal spaces, because time doesn’t work properly and it makes me feel like I could be magic. And to think, I only need to visit a lighting section of a hardware store to feel it.
That wraps it up for the vague and incredibly biased review!
amodelwhosread 