Ambivalent horror? [The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher]

A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel from the author of the “innovative, unexpected, and absolutely chilling” (Mira Grant, Nebula Award–winning author) The Twisted Ones.

Pray they are hungry.

Kara finds the words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring this peculiar area—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more one fears them, the stronger they become.

With her distinctive “delightfully fresh and subversive” (SF Bluestocking) prose and the strange, sinister wonder found in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, The Hollow Places is another compelling and white-knuckled horror novel that you won’t be able to put down. 

I have no idea what I read, but I liked it. Does that make sense? There's no super cohesive story, at least not in the sense of fleshed out explanation and a sensical flow of events. But T. Kingfisher's style of writing in The Hollow Places was so engaging that I much did not care. Kara, our protagonist, is a recent divorcee who moves back to live with her uncle. A neighbor and friend, Simon, joins her for an adventure of preternatural events in a dimension, or reality, where trees are full of fright. The whole thing unravels in such a way that when the most random thing happens you're just like, par for the course.

But what was the story? Why did it progress as it did? Was there a solid conclusion? Well yes, stories don't always follow logical, foreseeable paths, as in life. Obviously that's a more comfortable scenario, but life isn't comfortable, so conclusions aren't always comfortable, they don't always fit or have to fit into a predictable mold of usual. 

For me this wasn't the most horrific story. Basically sci-fi, yes. I supposed a general mix of both genres. But if I were recommending this I'm not calling it a horror story. It was a buddy adventure. An action adventure maybe? Going off the story alone, I'd give this three stars. But because I was invested in the characters and seeing what happened next I'm going with four. 4 stars from me.

The Hollow Places is due for publication October 06, 2020.