Monday, November 16, 2015

Lockwood & Co: The Hollow Boy

by Jonathan Stroud

Story summary: Our trio of intrepid young ghost hunters is now a quartet! But even the addition of the super-efficient Holly doesn't mean they don't have to deal with bloody footprints, near death, and annoying teammates.
Sequel to The Screaming Staircase and The Whispering Skull.

Why You Will Like This Book:
  • Really fun and entertaining, with great characters, exciting swordplay, and terrifying supernatural events.

And Why You Might Not:
  • There are ghosts, blood & guts, dark stuff. I was totally fine with it, but I suppose it could be disturbing to some people.
  • The jealousy the two female characters had towards each other got tiresome.






Thoughts: Still a great and immensely entertaining series. I don't feel like re-saying what I already said in the reviews for the others in the series, so I'll just quickly make a few points:

--George! Still my favourite character. His research mode is awesome, and I so wanted the book to take a break and just concentrate on him figuring out the answers to all his questions. That would be bad writing and not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the book, but it doesn't mean I didn't want it.
--Lucy's issues with Holly annoyed me a fair bit. I wish she'd been able to handle her jealousy. It kind of played into the stereotype that girls are always catty and can't get along.* The girls could have been an awesome pair if it weren't for that! Plus, I almost liked Holly. At least, I would have liked more time spent on her so I could know her better, which is basically the same as liking.
--Jonathan Stroud is very creative and writes very well, and is definitely one of my favourite living Young Adult authors. His Bartimeaus trilogy is still by far my favourite of his,but everything he writes is immensely entertaining.

Grade: 3 1/2 stars

* For most of my life, I assumed this was a totally false, sexist stereotype, since my experience was so much the opposite. I almost always got along splendidly with my friends, and we filled our lives with awesome things. But as I grew older, I discovered that many girls do unfortunately have a tendency towards excess relationship drama. But just because it is actually a thing sometimes, doesn't mean it's at all enjoyable to read about, or is worth putting in your book. I'd rather people mostly just wrote about characters who could deal with their emotions, especially jealousy, without taking it out on other people.

No comments: