Book Review: Rarity from the Hollow

Author| Robert Eggleton (Twitter)  Rating| 3.5 Stars

Edition| PDF Received from the author in exchange for an honest review

Buy Links| Amazon/Barnes and Noble/Book Depository

I received a copy of Rarity from the Hollow from the author, Robert Eggleton, in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you very much!

I have a lot of feelings about this book.  I read it rather quickly (for me) and it's not the type of book I would usually pick up on my own.  But that doesn't mean it didn't sound interesting and that I didn't enjoy it.  I did enjoy it, for the most part.

Rarity from the Hollow is about Lacy Dawn, a young girl growing up in a horrible home situation.  Her father is abusive, none of the teachers expect much from their students, and her best friend was killed by her father.  But, amidst all this, Lacy Dawn meets an android named DotCom, whom she falls in love.  He teaches her many things and even helps fix her parents- all with a catch: she has to save the universe.

The first half of this book really had my interest.  It was a heart-wrenching story about a girl struggling to survive in such a bad situation.  It was about a mother who desperately wanted to get out of this situation and was secretly studying for her GED but wasn't sure it would ever happen.  It was a realistic portrayal of a father beating his family and how they reacted to it.  And while it was really hard to read, I also really appreciated it and thought the message it was sending was extremely powerful.

The writing itself was incredibly beautiful and lyrical.  The changing perspectives were confusing at first, but soon created this wonderful effect throughout the novel.  It's a novel that reads like a prose passage from literature textbooks and was very heady in this regard.  I think this may have been my favorite part about reading the book.

However, I had many problems as the novel progressed.

For one, Lacy Dawn's powers are never really explained.  They're just accepted and I wasn't even sure what the extent of them were.  Or if they really existed.  Because, the whole time, I wasn't sure how honest of a narrator Lacy Dawn served to be, seeing as she's just a kid.  I couldn't tell whether her talking to the trees was a real thing happening, or just her imagination- for example.

The second half, too, got very weird.  I had no idea it would take the turn it did.  The concepts were often confusing and the "problem" she needs to save the universe from was bizarre.  I didn't think it was so great once I hit the second half, which was a shame.  It wasn't all around bad, though, so don't take this to mean it suddenly wasn't good anymore.  It was just silly.

I don't know who I would recommend this book to, honestly.  It's different from pretty much everything else I read and as such I don't have a set of parameters to judge who might like it.  If it sounds interesting to you, I really think you should give it a chance.  It's probably unlike anything else you've read this year.  Here's the goodreads link.