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Book Review: The Hollow Gods, by A. J. Vrana

A.J. Vrana‘s The Hollow Gods‘ sequel, The Echoed Realm, was featured on Sadie’s Spotlight a while back. The post included some absolutely gorgeous art for the series and I’ve seen even more since then. (I mean check out the covers of these special edition copies!) Beautiful! So, I borrowed an audio copy of The Hollow Gods through Hoopla to give the series a shot. It was narrated by Eva Kaminsky.

Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret.

For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker—an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.

When Kai wakes up next to the lifeless body of a recently missing girl, his memory blank, he struggles to clear his already threadbare conscience.

Miya, a floundering university student, experiences signs that she may be the Dreamwalker’s next victim. Can she trust Kai as their paths collide, or does he herald her demise?

And after losing a young patient, crestfallen oncologist, Mason, embarks on a quest to debunk the town’s superstitions, only to find his sanity tested.

A maelstrom of ancient grudges, forgotten traumas, and deadly secrets loom in the foggy forests of Black Hollow. Can three unlikely heroes put aside their fears and unite to confront a centuries-old evil? Will they uncover the truth behind the fable, or will the cycle repeat?

I liked this quite a lot. I’ll admit it wasn’t quite as intense as I’d expected, but I enjoyed it all the same. It was very atmospheric.

I liked the way Kai never truly tried to act human and how Miya accepted him for it all the same. And I liked the way Miya showed vulnerability, but also wasn’t a pushover and Kai appreciated that about her. I understood Mason’s difficulty and obsessive need to find answers. Though I thought his reluctance to believe lasted well past when it should have.

The prose is a little on the purple side. But I have a pretty high tolerance for that, often enjoying writing others complain about being too full of adjectives, similes, and metaphors. The story also wrapped around itself in a pleasant way, coming full circle and concluding nicely. But I never quite grasped The First’s motives, Madrix’s but not The Firsts. (I’m not certain I spelled that name right, since I never saw it in writing.)

All in all, I plan to read the second book too. But I’m not leaping straight in at the moment.

Other Reviews:

https://dinipandareads.home.blog/2020/07/31/blog-tour-review-the-hollow-gods-by-a-j-vrana/

The Hollow Gods by A. J. Vrana – Review & Blog Tour

https://paperfury.com/the-hollow-gods-a-j-vrana-review/

Book Review: Cold read, by Renee Joiner

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I borrowed an audio copy of Renee Joiner’s Cold Read through Hoopla.

His future is in her hands….

Tasia Jackson is a psychic working occasional cases with the police department and the rare one-off for an old friend at the FBI. Her real business is super-secret because even the government doesn’t know just how powerful and dangerous she is and what she can actually do. Her FBI friend Daniel Cordeiro probably has his suspicions, but he’s never voiced them until she gets a strange vision of him pleading for her help.

Daniel’s latest case is a run-of-the-mill missing persons, but it’s personal this time. It’s his missing person, his sister, and he’s desperate to beat the 48-hour clock imposed by her kidnapper. So, he goes it alone and gets himself in deep trouble. His hail-Mary hope is Tasia and the powers she is afraid to fully use. He can only pray she hears him when he calls….

Can Tasia tap into things she knows are better left alone in time to save innocent lives, or will her dangerous magic do them all more harm than good?

I wouldn’t say this was bad, just thin. There’s a plot, but there’s not much to it. There’s a world, but it’s not overly robust. There’s the bare bones of a romance, but it’s not particularly developed. There’s a mystery, but it’s not elaborate. I think this would have really benefited from an additional 100 pages and the extra meat that would have allowed the author to give the book.

I thought Kate Poels—the narrator—did a passable job. But the accents are pretty inconsistent. And lastly, I like the cover a lot (it’s what convinced me to pick the book up), but it doesn’t accurately represent the story. The heroine shepherds the life energies of the dead and has visions/prophetic dreams. She doesn’t read tarot cards or use any circle based or academic magic (as the books on the cover would suggest). I don’t suppose it’s a big deal, but it did lead me to expect something entirely different than what’s actually in the book.

All in all, I’d probably read another Joiner book, but she’s not making the favorites list based on this showing.