Hollow Kingdom: 07/01/21

Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton is a multi-POV post apocalyptic novel. What makes it different is it's told from the POV of the surviving pets. It's set in and around Seattle.

The main narrator is a pet crow, Shit Turd, or S.T. for short. He notices something is off when his human's eye falls out. He gets more suspicious when said human doesn't take the dog out or bother to feed him.

I honestly don't know what I was thinking when I decided to purchase a copy. From the very description it has two things in it I don't normally like. The first is zombie stories. I can think of exactly one series I genuinely liked: Undead by Kirsty McKay (2011) and its sequel, Unfed (2012). The other is animal POV narrated novels aimed at adults.

Midway through the first chapter I already was regretting my decision, though not initially or the two items listed above. S.T. and his ex-human liked junk food. They lived on it. S.T. talks about favorite foods constantly and each time it comes with an ®. I get that these are real world snacks and they're all registered but come the fuck on. Each of those marks makes this train wreck of a novel read like a late night infomercial.

The second annoyance is S.T.'s stream of consciousness. I get that he's a bird and probably doesn't know about paragraphs and simple sentences, but why do we have to tortured with yet another book of word vomit. It's difficult to read. See for example: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929) and The Penelope chapter of Ulysses by James Joyce (1922).

One star

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