![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apachefirecat
Title: Here Abide Monsters
Author: Andre Norton (Definitely recommend reading this woman's history/GoodReads biography!
Genre: Science fantasy
Review:
( Read more... )
apachefirecatTitle: Here Abide Monsters
Author: Andre Norton (Definitely recommend reading this woman's history/GoodReads biography!
Genre: Science fantasy
Review:
( Read more... )
spacedogfromspace
The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher
Synopsis
After her divorce, Kara moves into her uncle's museum. It's a roof over her head, and helping her uncle with the museum's day to day operations and cataloguing the collection occupies her mind. One day, a portal to another world opens in one of the walls of the museum. Upon exploring it, Kara and her friend Simon discover that this other world is a hub to countless portals to alternate worlds. The prospect of other worlds is exciting... until they get lost, and all they want to do is return home and never come to this place again.
Content Warnings: Mild Gore
Plot Summary - Spoilers!
Kara is recently divorced, without a job, and can no longer afford to keep her home. She doesn't want to move in with her mother again, but she doesn't know where else to go. Luckily, her Uncle Earl calls her up, and aware of her situation, invites her to come stay with him at the Museum.
Uncle Earl has always been the proprietor of the Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonder, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, also known as just the Wonder Museum. It's a shopfront collection of taxidermy and various other artifacts, some real, and some entertaining hoaxes. Kara has fond memories of the place from her childhood, and is grateful to her Uncle Earl for offering her a place to stay, so she decides to take him up on his offer to move into the spare room of the Museum. She works for her keep, helping run the Museum and cataloguing the Museum's collection. This keeps her busy and distracted from her divorce for over a year, and everything is normal.
One day, the Museum receives a package from Uncle Earl's friend, Woody Morwood. This isn't uncommon, as most of the things in the Museum are donated to them, and Woody has sent them things before. They open the package and discover a strange carving. On one side, the carving is an otter, but the other side depicts a human corpse. Kara thinks it's odd, but no more odd that anything else in the Museum. She catalogues it and places it on the wall upstairs beside the river otter taxidermy.
Uncle Earl has been having trouble with his knees since before Kara moved into the Museum, and eventually he has to get knee surgery. He will have to stay with Kara's mother while he is recovering, so Kara will be in charge of the Museum while he is away.
Kara is working in the Museum when she finds a hole knocked into the wall upstairs where the corpse-otter carving was. She assumes that a customer put a hole in the wall and didn't own up to it, and laments to Simon— the barista from the coffee shop next door —about it. Simon turns out to be pretty handy, and offers to help patch the drywall. The two go to examine the hole to see what kind of materials they will need, and discover that there is a space behind the wall. There's a hallway behind the wall, but it stretches further than the length of the building in both directions. They realize that the hole in the wall is some sort of portal. Exploring this hallway beyond the portal, they find a very old corpse, and a door that is bolted shut with numerous rusted deadbolts.
They briefly consider calling the police about the corpse they found, but decide that explaining the portal and impossible hallway would lead to too much trouble. They decide to leave the police out of it for the moment and open the door. When they go through, they find themselves in some kind of bunker. When they go up out of the bunker, they are in a strange foggy bank on the edge of a river. There are hundreds of little islands covered in willow trees. Each island has its own bunker, presumably portals to other worlds.
They decide to explore, and make sure to pay attention to their surroundings so they can find their way back to their bunker. They come across a school bus with the name of a county that does not exist in their world. They decide to rest in the bus, but the seats start writhing as if there are children trapped in the seats themselves. Terrified, Kara and Simon run away, trying to get back to their bunker. But they quickly realize that their surroundings are different— it's as if the willows had moved. It's getting late, and they are now lost.
They search for their bunker, feeling strange presences, not from the willows, but the empty spaces between them. They feel unsettled, and don't want to be out after dark, so they shelter in another bunker for the night. They find some evidence of other travellers from other worlds. Some sort of military squad had apparently been exploring the strange world, as told by one of the men in his left-behind journal. The journal entries mention that They caught and changed each one of his troupe one by one, killing them in horrible ways.
On their way out of the bunker they see a strange man rowing a boat through the river. At first they want to call out to him, but they have a bad feeling about him, and decide to hide in the bunker until he passes. They explore another bunker, partially flooded, and are surprised to find a person living inside, sitting in the water. He introduces himself as Martin Sturdivant, and he tells them about how he knew someone who lasted two weeks in this world. He also explains that if they think too hard, They will hear them. And if They come for them, they'd better hope that They are hungry. Because if they aren't... well, the journal entries explain what happens when They aren't. Kara and Simon flee from the bunker when they realize that Martin Sturdivant doesn't have a body from the waist down, and is floating in his own entrails in the water.
Eventually, they find their way back to their own bunker and are home, having missed a couple of days, which sparks a lot of questions from the Museum's tourists, regulars of the coffee shop, and Kara's mom. Kara makes up an excuse that Simon had a medical emergency and she had to take him to the hospital, where she couldn't get cell signal, and this appeases everyone and stops the questions. Kara and Simon deadbolt the door shut and cover the hole in the wall, moving a cabinet in front of it. Kara has to find another place for the corpse-otter carving, and puts it in the display case with the albino raccoons for the moment.
The next day visitors to the Museum notify Kara that there is broken glass upstairs. Kara goes to investigate, and finds that the case with the albino raccoons is broken, and one of the raccoons is missing. She assumes that someone broke the case and stole the raccoon, and thinks nothing else of it.
Late one night, she hears a strange scratching sound at her bedroom door. Assuming it's a rat, she sends the Museum cat to deal with it. When she catches a glimpse of it, she realizes that it is much bigger than a rat, white, and not making a sound. She worries for the cat but he emerges with just a few minor scratches. The rat is nowhere in sight though. Kara goes back to bed, deciding to find the dead rat in the morning. In her search, she finds the taxidermy raccoon under a cabinet, with its stuffing all torn out. She digs around inside, assuming the rat climbed inside and died, but instead she finds the corpse-otter carving. She thinks this is strange, and puts the carving in the river otter case.
One night, she notices a strange silvery glow in the Museum. She sees the river otter taxidermy come to life. She realizes that the corpse-otter carving is causing all of this, and that it is trying to get back to the other world. Now, it is possessing the river otter, and is hunting her. Kara runs through the portal, the otter following her, and their showdown ends when she stumbles into Martin Sturdivant's bunker. The otter follows her in, and it gets too close to Martin Sturdivant, and is torn apart by him.
Kara returns home, and she and Simon drywall over the hole, closing the portal forever. They then call up Woody Morwood to demand answers and ask why he would send them such a thing. He explains that the artifact was creating portals all over the place, and he thought that if he sent it somewhere with no willows, it would be powerless. He said that he sent a note with the carving explaining the danger, but they must have missed it when they opened the package.
Uncle Earl returns to the Museum, and everything returns to normal. Kara and Simon are still traumatized by the events, and become close friends because of their shared experience.
Thoughts - Spoilers!
I did not like this book. To be fair, most of that is on me, because I chose to read a portal fantasy when I do not like portal fantasies. But genre aside, I found this book pretty lacking. It's atmospheric and creepy, and obviously inspired by Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows,' which is really neat. But I feel like this isn't explored or executed very well. The characters kind of ruin it by constantly trying to puzzle out why or how any of the things are happening. And they don't ever really come up with answers, so there are just paragraphs of text where the characters are just speculating and theorizing. I feel like that should be the role of the reader, not the characters, and it takes away from the terror these characters are supposed to be feeling. Having to read through the characters coming up with theories is just kind of exhausting.
About half way through the book I started to get really annoyed with the characters, mostly Kara, because it is really obvious that what is causing the portal and all the strange occurrences with the taxidermy animals is the corpse-otter carving. It's so obvious that the carving is trying to get back to the world with the willows that it makes Kara seem infuriatingly stupid for taking so long to figure it out.
The characters are also just kind of flat. Kara is a sad divorced lady and Simon's whole character is being quirky and gay and having a magic eyeball, I guess. I just didn't care for any of them because neither of them have any real depth. Uncle Earl, who is barely in this book, has a more fleshed out character than the main protagonists.
A lot of things just stacked up to make this book annoy the crap out of me, which sucks. I was excited going into this book, but it was a pain to finish and I was excited to be done with it and not have to listen to Kara compare the willow world to Narnia anymore.
I didn't like this book, but if you like portal fantasy, it might be worth a try. It's like Narnia, if Narnia was creepy.
