The Hollow Places, by T. Kingfisher. Saga Press 2020

I’m not sure whether to call this book a horror story, science fiction, or fantasy. Whatever it is, I loved it.

Freshly divorced and still gob-smacked by this fact Kara goes to live with her aging and eccentric uncle Earl. Earl’s not just your average eccentric; his home is also a museum of weird things: the Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy. It’s a tourist spot; people come to see the Fiji Mermaids, Jackalopes, human skulls, posters about Big Foot and aliens, and dioramas of stuffed mice reenacting the end of The Empire Strikes Back. The deal is she will help with the museum in exchange for rent. She’s good at it; she helped out there as a teenager and is used to the bones and stuffed elk head that her grandfather puts over her bed because he knows it was her friend when she was a kid.

When grandpa has to go get knee surgery, Kara is sure she can handle the musuem on her own. Right up until she notices that someone has knocked a hole in the sheetrock in one room. She enlists the aid of the barista next door, Simon, a gay thrift-store, Mad Hatter, goth- to fix the hole. And pretty much as soon as he starts he discovers a very large problem- there is a hallway behind the hole. Which would be fine, except… there is not really anything behind that room. It’s a place that cannot be there.

Of course they enlarge the hole so they can investigate. The more they see, the weirder things get, until they know they are in another world. A world of water, small islands of sand, metal bunkers on the islands, and willows. Lots and lots of willows. Think Algernon Blackwood amount of willows.

This book is seriously creepy. The can’t be there world looks innocent at first, until they start to explore. This is Twilight Zone extended to movie length territory, the biggest fear (to me) being ‘what if they can’t get back”. But there is more to fear than just that; there are things that are just wrong. The book is also seriously funny; Kara and Simon make a great, practical team dealing with the horrors but they also react to fear with humor, which I can relate to. I loved the characters, I loved that there was no love interest thrown in the mix, and I really love that, even though it’s a stand alone as far as I can tell, it could easily be made into a series. I mean, Kara does live in a museum of the weird, and people send them new stuff all the time…. Five stars.