Michael J. Sullivan’s Hollow World recently got reviewed twice with similar results.
Maggie Jones at Not Yet Read offered this interpretation.
Hollow World is enjoyable, has a fantastic concept and doesn’t fit well into any one category, which is appealing to me. But best of all, I enjoyed it. I can see many people reading this and coming to wildly different conclusions and feelings, it is really just that fascinating. I am probably going to recommend this to a lot of people I know so that we can have some dialogue on it.
<snip>
So- the world-building, concept and idea are all 5-star for me. I like the characters, but not as much as the world. I would be more interested in the stories of the inhabitants, or perhaps the stories some of the pioneers who built this world and saved humanity from disaster. The ending feels almost mournful, reminiscent of I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.
Meanwhile Mick Happy Reviews delivers these sentiments.
Anyone who has been reading my recent posts knows I like time travel or stories when people from our world go to a new one. This fish-out-of-water scenario is always interesting when it involves the future and we get to see the author’s speculation of what the future might hold for mankind. Mr. Sullivan’s take on the future in Hollow World is interesting and thought-provoking and will force the reader to question what the purpose of life is and how do sexuality and religion play a part in it. Luckily it doesn’t beat those topics over your head, after all there is still an interesting story going on in there as well.
One thing I did find with Hollow World is that a few of the big reveals were possibly too heavily foreshadowed meaning they didn’t have quite the impact that they could have. On the other hand, it was nice to actually guess a few events in the story rather than just go along for the ride. Either way, it doesn’t detract from Hollow World being a good book and rating 4 Mick Happies for me. I recommend you give it a shot and if you buy it in print form you can get a free e-book copy from the author. Additionally, the e-book comes with two versions of the book, the explicit language one and the clean version. See you in the future.
