Hollowmen: The Hollows, Book 2

I completed Hollowland and Hollowmen in a weekend of housework and errands that would have felt like a wasted weekend without them. I can see why Amanda Hocking has been described as an online phenomenon. Since listening to Hollowland I have searched for everything she has written and she is quite prolific. My wish list looks like her bibiography...and I have yet to be disappointed. I am not her target audience, it's been a long time since I could claim young adulthood but the genre is producing so many excellent books that I just can't resist. I also have a tween who loves to read (and listen!) and I like to know what she is reading and offer suggestions. Every once in awhile I find an author like Hocking and I get to feel like a superhero in my daughters eyes! Thanks to Amanda Hocking I am metaphorically wearing a giant 'S' on my shirt!

After having read the first book - which I thoroughly enjoyed - I was looking forward to this book. Overall I enjoyed it but it was not as interesting as the first. I also didn't believe some of the decisions the characters made when faced with challenges. They made me feel that the originally strong character that had survived by her wits had turned into an airhead. But overall, a good read that held my interest until the end.

The ending was realistic but not what I had hoped for, which leaves room for a sequel.

Believable, entertaining, good.

Yes; to change the ending of the story and if it makes sense, to pick out and follow other characters once all loose ends are tied up with the originals.

This was a very good book, I particularly enjoyed the sequence between books "Hollowmen and Hollowland" the narrator was great, funny at times when she tried to imitate male voices, overall she did a great job. The book was easy to understand and follow, the story, characters and plot was great. I enjoyed this book. A final note, this book is not a typical zombie story, although there were fights for survival, it concentrated mostly in the humane area, great twist to the story.

Insecure goth teen girls. Hocking attempts to envelop the protaganast, Remey, in the obnoxious, "you go girl" feministic power embodied by the Spice Girls coupled with the dystopian morbidity of Marlyn Manson. But her motivation is completely alien to someone with a fully developed adult brain. Throughout the series, Remey forces herself to be both the martyred motherly protector, responsible for the lives of people who are too stupid to live in a world filled with zombies, and the mauradering woman warrior companion of He-Man, destroying all that is evil - complete with female lion familiar. This wouldn't necessairly be a bad combination, but Hokings depiction of Remey is that of an angsty, coprecious teen girl who simply can't decide which of her impluses to act upon. She faces a constantly repeating story arc, where she sees an obvious danger, decides not to do anything about it for the sake some sort of misplaced feminine reservedness, waits until the problem becomes an emergency, then defeats the threat through some sort of go-girl super power. My guess is that this book might appeal to insecure teen girls who are going though the adolecent process of carving out an adult identity, but the protaganast's motivations are so exagerated that I find it hard to believe that anyone would enjoy listening to a story that is best described as a grossly distorted characture of human behavior.

One of two things. Either the protaganast could stop her cycle of perpetual self-doubt, and just kill the people who need to be killed as soon as she recognizes the need for killing. Or, the protaganast could be ripped to pieces by zombies in the first 5 minutes because she doubted an obvious instinct she knew to be right, which is a fate she rightly deserves.

The scene where Remey is strapped to a hospital gurney and is forced to close a surgical opening in her abdomen by herself, without anesthesia. This scene was my favorite because of the unintentional irony of an exceedingly strong woman who consistently makes poor decisions. Hockings was digging so unbelieveably deep to demonstrate Remey's toughness without realizing how the main character's willingness to make self-sacrafices undermines any strength she might posess. It's of no value for a young woman to be so though when she VOLUNTEERED to undergo horrific medical expiriments out of some misplaced sense of motherlyness. Strength gudied by stupidity isn't strength, it's a protracted weakness.

Decent zombie defense fortifications.

This is the only book that I stopped listening to so that I could imagine my own ending where the main character dies in the manner that she would actually die if she found herself in the plot line of this book.

I really enjoyed this, although sad in some parts, it really is a great book. I recommend it!