EmmaSkies's Reviews > A Dark and Hollow Star

Do you want a Faerie encyclopedia!? Then boy do I have the book for you...

A Dark and Hollow Star is a 500 page book that spends so much time infodumping every faerie concept you could possibly think of that it feels like maybe 30% of that is actual plot. Every time I thought the plot was finally going to start moving, it just introduced a new race or rule or vague history lesson instead. The first 200 pages are almost entirely made up of just paragraph after paragraph of explanations with no real story.

This book includes:
Faerie/fae/folk/ironborn, mortals/immortals, seelie/unseelie courts, royal politics, magic, alchemy, titans, furies, demons, monsters, sins, vague allusions to past atrocities, royal lines of succession, resistance organizations, and attempts to explore racism and sexuality (which end up just feeling very surface level)...and it spends the first 400 pages dumping all of that in a pot and stirring it up in a meaningless stew and then decides it actually just wants to be DnD. I cannot stress enough that I'm not joking, this book literally becomes Dungeons and Dragons 80% in, with a D20 and a Heads Up Display and everything. Introducing an entirely new magic system in the last 20% of the book that doesn't mesh at all with the piles and piles of different concepts that have been thrown at the reader for the last 400 pages was...a choice.

All in all, there just isn't a complete story here. I get that it's the first of four books, but even single entries in a series need to have their own cohesive plot. The one that's attempted in this book is a jerky stop and start ride between all the infodumping and POV changing and complete lack of the passage of time (I would have sworn up and down this all took place over a few days, until the author actually mentions 300+ pages in that it's been almost 2 weeks) and in the end nothing the main characters do seems to even matter because of the huge ex machina at the end. The author could have cut out the preceding 450 pages if that's what was going to happen anyway...

On top of that, I was not a fan of the writing style. This paragraph stuck out to me immediately (no spoilers because it's from Page 2):

Beside the goddess stood Erinys Megaera, the only sister Alecto now had left - however much they disliked each other. As Alecto expected, there was no love left in Megaera's gaze. No pity. Alecto would be replaced when this was over - so, too, would Tisiphone. The realm's respect for Alecto's grief would no longer delay what was inevitable. Other immortals would be trained to fill Alecto's and Tisiphone's roles, and the Furies would be three once again.

I think her name might be Alecto. I don't know, maybe the author should say it again just to make sure...
(hilariously, the character changes her name less than two pages later so it actually isn't Alecto anymore)

I'm also personally not a fan of pop-culture references in books, and this is chock full of them.

...when she got home tonight, she was going to take a bubble bath and binge-watch She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on Netflix until she fell asleep.

There are so many and a lot of them are so specific that it ends up reading like the author was paid for product placement. Things referenced ad nauseum include (but are not limited to):
The MCU
Twilight
She-Ra
Legend of Zelda
Mario Party
Portal 2
Harry Potter
The Hobbit (movies)
Lord of the Rings
Dungeons and Dragons

Between all that and dialogue gems like "W-T-Fuck" and "Holy effing shit" and "Hecking," this just wasn't my cup of tea in the writing department.

All that to say, this was a two star book for me. I did not have a good time and nothing in this book makes me want to read a follow-up, much less THREE. There is exactly one unresolved plotline I'll be bummed to miss out on, but it's nowhere near enough to push through more of these books. I won't be picking up the sequel (which, incidentally, somehow has an even worse cover than this one).