Hollowstone [Kindle Edition]

Hollowstone is a poorly-written, poorly-edited piece of garbage. Before you finish the first page, you will understand why it was vanity-published. The grammar is atrocious; further, the structure and plot are reminiscent of a thirteen-year-old fanfic author's Supernatural/Twilight crossover.

And all of that is leaving out the egregious misogyny on the author's part. The protagonist's friend, meant to be a good character, nonchalantly characterizes two girls as "the biggest skanks in the school", adding that he would know, as he did them both in the hot tub -- completely unaware of the hypocrisy inherent in that confession. And that's not even the worst of it. In the world of Hollowstone, it's commonplace for Music Theory teachers to make crude oral sex jokes about their female wind instrument players.

If that statement was confusing to you, I must clarify: Yes, Upkins seems to be under the impression that Music Theory involves actually playing instruments. Many things in the world of Hollowstone do not work as they do in the real world. For further evidence, one needs only look to the courtroom scene at the end of the novel, in which the judge sees fit to overturn a jury's guilty verdict for no reason other than she felt like it. It's clear that Upkins cast a woman in the role of the judge for this very reason: Women are silly and irrational, after all. They can't see the evidence that's right in front of their noses.

In short, if you're looking for a good piece of fiction, you have better options than Hollowstone. And if you're looking for a piece of terrible writing to make fun of, you still have better options than Hollowstone. Pass this one up if you know what's good for you.

There was a lot of hype about this book in certain circles pre-publication, and I was one of those who were really looking forward to getting their hands on it. The characters sounded fantastic and it was great to see a main character who was a POC. Doesn't happen often enough.

And the characters are great. They're well-rounded and likable and almost enough to keep you reading past the terrible writing. Almost. I'll freely concede that I'm a nitpicker who twitched with every grammatical error and misuse of punctuation, but I kept reading until I was past the halfway mark in the hopes that the plot would carry me through. It didn't. The Satanic-esque evil of the bad guys is ridiculously predictable - place it in the midst of a high school and you have the recipe for a B-grade horror movie - and the writing style is jerky, stopping and starting every few pages. Most of the dialogue is terrible, with run on sentences that would require a breath or two given no punctuation at all detracting from what the characters are actually saying.

In short, while the issues of racism and prejudice are handled in a very eye-opening and realistic way, they're the only things that are. Hollowstone reads like a bad nano novel, and no matter how much you may want to enjoy it, the writing just won't let you.

If I could give it zero stars, I would. There is fanfic better than this, and with less obvious self-inserts. If you hate grammar but love virulent misogyny, this is the book for you!

Otherwise, don't waste your time or money.