Hollowland (The Hollows, #1) [Formato Kindle]

Remy, the 19 year old protagonist is facing `the end of times'; a post-apocalyptic world where a rabies type virus has turned the majority of the population into zombies. Zombies that roam with an insatiable hunger and are particularly fond of human flesh; one bite, one splash of zombie blood or saliva in an open wound and you become infected. That is if you survive.

Remy and her 8 year old brother Max were brought to a government run quarantine by a group of soldiers who saved them during a zombie raid; Max was sick and stayed on a different floor in the medical wing. Beck, a soldier that took an interest in Remy and Max; taught her how to fight the zombies, not just with guns but with whatever was available, that along with her guts and instinct was a gift that saved her and others countless times.

Zombies overtake the quarantine, yet in all the fright, terror and pandemonium Remy manages to escape bringing along Harlow, an endearing 13 year old who refuses to stay. Amidst the chaos she finds out that only her brother Max and select government doctors and scientists were evacuated to a quarantine 'near' this one. Off into the Zombie filled wasteland they go. They'll soon find out that zombies aren't the only thing to fear.

During their travels they meet Blue, a medical intern with good insight and judgment, Lazlo, a famous recording artist who is a bit eccentric, anxious and easy on the eyes and my personal favorite; Ripley, a zombie killing lion who rocks! They make a sort of unspoken team together set out to find the quarantine, each for their own reasons. Along the way they face, among other terrifing ordeals crazy cults, Mad Max crazy wanna-be's and other 'humans' can be just as vicious as the zombies.

The horrors they face are ghastly and shocking, it'll leave your heart thumping like crazy, but the story is also heart wrenching and sad with so much depth of emotion. Every chapter takes you on a roller coaster ride of full of ups and downs; and the constant question of what's going to happen next? It's virtually impossible to put this book down.

Remy's character is strong, physically and emotionally; despite her gruff exterior and some of the harder choices and decisions she's forced to make, she is still vulnerable and compassionate. She has one main goal: Find Max! She'll risk anything to find him.

All of the main characters are believable and realistic; I've grown to care for them all. Their group dynamic is perfect and adds so much depth to the story. This is one fantastic read. Can we expect a follow up? I think the potentials there.

There are typographical errors but I could have cared less. The story was so great that it didn't stop my reading stride at all.

So, Amanda----When's the next one coming out? (I say as if she reads this, LOL) Can't hurt to ask!!!!

I feel bad judging this novel too harshly. It is, after all, self-published, and at ninety-nine cents, the entertainment I derived from it supersedes what I've derived from books I've paid a lot more for.

In the interests of truth and justice, I'll try to be frank but fair.

First, you have to take this as pure camp. The MCs run around with a zombie-eating lion pet. All credibility goes out the window when A FREAKING LION joins the party. Second, half the book is spent fighting human adversaries, in the form of creepy child harem-owning cultists and serial killers. These are caricatures straight out of B-movies. The cult leader's name is "Korech" and the marauders paint "HELTER SKELTER" on the walls in their victims' blood.

Okay, so clearly the author's tongue is firmly planted in cheek. Or so we hope.

As a mindless, inadvertently self-parodying zombie romp, it's passably entertaining. None of the characters display more than the requisite one dimension except, surprisingly, main character Remy. Hocking actually makes her female MC a legitimate bad***. She kills zombies ruthlessly. She doesn't flinch when she has to abandon infected friends. She has a plan and sticks to it. And Remy isn't tough in the "tough until Mr. Right makes her melt" way. Remy stays brutally focused throughout her unfolding romance with a male character. With how hokey the rest of the book is, I was disconcerted, and slightly impressed, that Hocking stuck to her guns and kept Remy a strong, independent character right to the end.

There's nothing here you haven't seen before. Zombies are evil. Most human survivors are evil. Both types die in gratuitously violent and satisfying ways.

What saved me from instantly forgetting this book was the twist ending. I thought Hocking was telegraphing the cliché, irrational ending--"I don't care about the fate of the world, I just want to save my (insert loved one here)!"--but she flipped the tables admirably.

I liked the surprise ending so much that I'll probably buy the sequel, just to see if Hocking does a 180 or not.

This isn't Literature with a capital 'L.' The prose is fanfic-quality. The characters are stereotypes and the plotting and themes and ideas are lifted straight from B Horror 101. And yet, somehow, I liked Remy--and fine, the lion too--enough to keep reading.

I'm almost annoyed it wasn't worse.

Amanda Hocking does a decent job of crafting a post-apocalyptic zombie story with likable characters and a somewhat interesting plot. The protagonist is Remy, a teenage girl facing humanity's doom at the hands (and gnarly teeth) of flesh-eating zombies. In the chaos of a zombie attack she is separated from her little brother and the story is essentially her harrowing quest to find him. Along the way she meets other survivors who join her in her dangerous quest. Remy is a strong character who, for reasons that aren't really clear, inspires devotion and loyalty from pretty much everyone who joins her ragtag group including a full-grown zombie-killing female lion. Yes, a lion. It even rides in cars with them. They at one point encounter a group who has several tigers. I'm not making this up. This isn't the only thing about Hollowland that made me roll my eyes.

This is overall a good book and I wanted to like it but it is plagued by annoyances such as hordes of comma splices, typographical errors, missing, misused and misspelled words and implausible and cliched plot devices. Much of this is simply due to the fact that, as a self-published work, it did not have the benefit of an editor's touch. But then a WRITER should know the difference between "lulled" and "lolled", "except" and "accept", "idea" and "ideal". Then there is Ms. Hocking's broad-strokes writing style. With the exception of the main character, there isn't much in the way of character development. Every person in the story is a two-dimensional cutout, a device to move the story along and so I just couldn't really CARE about any of them. Even Remy's love interest wasn't interesting even during a darn-near pornographic description of the consummation of their love for each other (which begs the question- Is this a YOUNG adult book or a young ADULT book?). The environment they are in and the things in that environment are pretty generic. Guns are simply "guns" or "shotguns". Cars are simply "cars" or "SUV's" or "station wagons". I don't know how much of this is due to Ms Hocking's lack of writing skill and how much is due to the fact that she just doesn't have any practical knowledge to draw from. The fact that she laughably describes a soldier's handgun as a "service revolver" that uses ammo clips and later says a "shotgun" uses "bullets" gives me reason to believe there's a heavy dose of the latter at work here. Hers is a cartoon version of the world which at times seems to come from an elementary school kid's perspective. Whatever the case, there isn't any texture or realism to the landscape and so there's little to grasp tight enough to get pulled along for the ride. Couple this with absurdities such as pet lions and an Army PRIVATE who wields influence and pull at a military-run compound (which houses the only hope for humanity but has the CRAPPIEST security in the history of mankind) and you have some serious problems suspending disbelief enough to buy into this story. And that's not the worst of it- if you were looking for food in a strange place where you KNOW flesh-eating undead are about, would you REALLY pass up restaurants and grocery stores and choose to split up and rummage through a pitch-dark, windowless CASINO full of DEAD BODIES? I swear, at this point if their lion companion began to talk and help our heroes escape through a magic wardrobe, I wouldn't even have batted an eye.

It wasn't my intention to write a niggling review in which I pointed at and even nit-picked at this book's weaknesses. Some slack-cutting is in order here because this is a self-published work for a young adult audience. As such, one can't expect subtle, high-brow literature. It is what it is- It's fun escapism for a young audience that taps into just the right character archetypes and story motifs to make the casual reader think he or she is reading something compelling if not original. As YA escapism it isn't really required to be a perfectly executed work. If you are a young female reader or just willing to suspend disbelief enough and ignore the naive writing style (and I see that many young fans of Ms. Hocking are), you'll probably find yourself hooked enough to buy the next book to see what happens. I myself will pass.