In fact, there is no real sense of an ending. Every apparent haven the children reach holds more danger and they are running for their lives right up to the final word. It’s a bit of a “one-damn-thing-after-another” book. But the chase and the quest are what keep the reader (or listener) engaged. If Miss Peregrine’s Home asked whether it is right to safely imprison oneself and others, no matter how beautiful life within the prison may be, then Hollow City questions the nature of responsibility and sacrifice. Even the peculiar children and the “ymbrynes” who guard them can be morally ambiguous. Instead, the wights-terrifying servants of the hollowgasts-will work within any group that suits them, as the evils of war are perpetrated by both sides. Riggs doesn’t follow the standard cliché of a World War II setting by allying the evil hollowgasts and wights with the Nazis. Yet the author also uses his narrative and the context of war to explore good and evil, and the moral ambiguities of warfare.
On one level, Hollow City is structured as quest, with the use of time travel to propel the action forward.
The children, having escaped from the island of Cairnholm and having left the time loop that had kept them safe, now manage to evade the immediate pursuit of the “hollowgasts” and their attendant “wights,” and arrive on the mainland, knowing that while they were at sea they were stalked by a U-boat and, now on land, will be hunted by zeppelins. Where Miss Peregrine’s Home opened slowly, Hollow City hits the ground running, beginning right where the first novel left off. Now Riggs has written a second book in the series: Hollow City. The “unique selling proposition” (to borrow some marketing lingo) of vintage photographs, described in the narrative and strewn through the text, added to the appeal-perhaps many even speculated when exploring these strange photos how Riggs developed his characters and dreamlike narratives. Even the structure of the book was challenging, with false starts and a long-delayed introduction to the main focus of the narrative.
Like many of the best Young Adult books, the novel pulled no punches: war, death, betrayal, identity, and trust were all explored, often in a difficult context. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, the first installment of Ransom Riggs’ Peculiar Children series, was a surprise best-seller in 2011.
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