Brief Synopsis
“The Hollow Boy” is the third book in Jonathan Stroud’s “Lockwood & Co.” series, wherein ghost hunter Lucy Carlyle works for the eponymous Lockwood & Co. to eradicate ghosts that are plaguing the London area. A massive cluster of ghosts causes greater trouble than ever, but most frustrating for Lucy is how distant her friend and colleague Lockwood has become…
Content Warnings: Violence (PG-13), Horror, Death
What Do I Think?
Up until now, I had avoided writing reviews for the Lockwood & Co. books. Part of this is because these books are a little older (though that didn’t stop me from writing a review about “Wild Magic”, which is 30 years old), but part of the reason was because I felt like there wasn’t much to say about those first two books. They aren’t terrible novels by any means, but they also aren’t particularly exciting, either. The premise is fun – ghosts are very real, are quite capable of killing the living, and young adults are often conscripted to become ghost hunters because of their sensitivity towards the phantoms. And while the first two books explored this concept quite well, with plenty of harrowing adventures, the personal stakes were flimsy at best, and I never felt particularly engaged by the stories.
That changed, however, with “The Hollow Boy.” Despite being the third book in this series, “The Hollow Boy” feels like the sort of powerhouse of an opener that should start a series, establish both grand, world-altering stakes in the form of a massive surge in ghost activity that not even the most expert ghost hunters can seem to stop, but also a series of personal stakes for the protagonist Lucy Carlyle: in addition to a growing psychic connection with ghosts that she can’t explain, she has to deal with her friend and colleague Anthony Lockwood becoming more distant, and a new member of the Lockwood and Co. team who manages to push all the wrong buttons.
The story is delightfully fast-paced, jumping from crisis to crisis while still providing plenty of creepy detail that leaves you on edge. Even though you’re pretty sure that the protagonists are safe, they certainly never feel safe, creeping around haunted buildings where the worst phantoms lurk. The story never chickens out or uses bad excuses to explain our protagonists’ survival of these dangerous situations, either – the characters often take quite the beating, escaping or prevailing through wit and earned experience.
Perhaps the greatest addition to the story is the talking skull, whom only Lucy can hear – though this character was present in the previous novel, here he is a far chattier (and snarkier) element that provides a good deal of much-needed humor to an otherwise grim story. The skull’s voice is rather reminiscent of Bartimaeus, the eponymous main character of Jonathan Stroud’s well-received “Bartimaeus” series. As such, fans of that series will be extremely delighted by the skull’s inclusion.
Overall, “The Hollow Boy” proves to be a knockout of a novel, elevating a series that was starting to flounder. It is unfortunate that it takes three books to get to this point, but it certainly seems well-worth the wait. Here’s to hoping the rest of the series continues to live up to the standard set here!
Jacob Ryckman 