The Hollow Kingdom
By Clare B. Dunkle
Copyright 2003
230 pages
I received this book as a Christmas present. It is the first of a trilogy called the Hollow Hills trilogy.
This is essentially a young adult book along the lines of Tamara Pierce.
Kate is a young English orphan. She and her sister Emily have been uprooted and taken to live at Hollow Hills, the maternal family estate. Mr. Roberts, her guardian, is an idiot and jerk. He leaves the girls with two old great aunts.
After they have been there a few months, Kate realizes someone is watching her all the time. Then during an outing, she and Emily get lost. They come upon a gypsy caravan and a mysterious man in a black cloak and hood takes them home.
He turns out to be the goblin king. He is a scary dude. And he wants Kate for his wife.
Kate wants no part of this. Of course the adults do not believe her when she tells them she is in danger; in fact her idiot guardian actually tries to hurry her headlong into danger.
He tries to convince a psychiatrist that Kate needs to go to an asylum, but Kate convinces the psychiatrist otherwise. So Mr. Roberts tells Kate that Emily has vanished in hopes she will tell the psychiatrist about the goblins.
Instead, Kate, believing the goblins have kidnapped Emily, goes to the goblin king herself and offers herself in trade for Emily. Only it turns out Mr. Roberts himself had kidnapped Emily and had her tied up in the basement.
I enjoyed this read and I will look for the second and third installments of the trilogy. I enjoyed the world and the pace of the book was great.
4 stars
Wow, sounds like you read that one fast! Don't you just love it when you find one like that? Redeeming Love was like that for me, I couldn't put it down. But it's been a long time since I've found that. It seems like I have to read nine duds before I get to that great number ten! Thanks for the review.
ReplyDelete