The Hollow Ones by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan
When FBI agent Odessa Hardwicke is forced to shoot her partner, a man who until moments before was laughing and joking with her over a meal, everything she thought she knew is thrown into doubt. Shunned by her colleagues and put under investigation she is despatched to clean out a retiring agents office where she discovers records of similar events taking place over multiple centuries, all involving a mysterious figure known as John Silence.
This was a beautifully written book from start to finish. It has a rollicking pace and at 300 pages was quite easy to finish in a couple of sittings. It was dark and atmospheric and had just the right amount of madness and mystery. It takes place over two time periods with the first being present day and the second set in Mississippi in 1962 after the lynching of a white man takes place. Ed Solomon, one of the first black FBI agents, is sent to Delta to investigate and keep the peace before racial tension destroys the small town. When a demonically possessed child tells him to get John Silence, John is summoned and we move completely into the occult and otherworld.
Both Odessa and Ed are nicely put together, similar characters but in very different points of their life. There is simmering resentment within Solomon, an unwillingness to subject another person to Silence and his riddles and secrets. It is matched by the curiosity and anticipation of Odessa. Silence himself is an enigma, ageless, cursed to walk the earth as others die and subject to terrors no one else has any conception of. He is an immortal John Constantine without the smoking.
The Hollow Ones has a couple of really good scares and one or two moments that are truly horrific especially as the demonic presence know as Obediah, as we are told in its two short pov scenes, sees no difference between taking the life of an adult or a child, relishing in the pain caused and the moment of death that is rewarded with an ecstatic expulsion from the hosts body.
The one thing that holds me back from really enjoying this one was a feeling I had very early on and that I never quite shook off. It is incredibly similar to the 1998 movie Fallen starring Denzel Washington and John Goodman and the late James Gandolfini. Fallen is a story of the fallen angel Azreal, a demonic spirit that travels from body to body, murdering innocents and causing havoc all while leaving his hosts with no recollection of their actions. Her target is a police officer played by Denzel, he is accused of being responsible for the murders and he must find a way to defeat the entity whilst…. Well you get it. I’m sure someone did it before Fallen and someone will do it again later and it should not detract from a skillfully written story that stands very much on it’s own two feet but it sort of did.
The Hollow Ones by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan is a fine book that dives headfirst into the world of the occult and demonic possession and takes no prisoners. If you like a good scare and you’ve not encountered this sort of story before I think you’ll absolutely love it. 7.5/10
This arc was provided to me by the lovely people at Grand Central Publishing in exchange from an honest and unbiased review.
