Hollow World

By: Michael J. Sullivan

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Ellis Rogers is an ordinary man, about to embark on an extraordinary journey. All his life he has played it safe, but faced with a terminal illness he’s willing to take an insane gamble.

He’s built a time machine in his garage. If it works, he could find more than a cure for his illness; he might find what everyone has been searching for since time began...

©2013 Michael J. Sullivan (P)2014 Recorded Books LLC

Hollow world… more like ‘Hollow writing’

I’m so disappointed.

Hollow World feels a bit… Hollow.

There’s some interesting concepts that never really come to blossom. As if the ideas somehow just get away from the author. I’ve read a lot of other works by this author and one of the things I usually like about his work are the well rounded characters. There’s not one of those in this novel. The characters are quite flat and beige. Even the villain (who you can see coming from a mile away) is a dull cliché. And while it’s at least obvious why most of the side characters are dull (I guess that’s the point of them, though I don’t fully understand the author decided to make them this way) there’s no contrasting character that makes up for that. The main character is awful and completely uninteresting.
The world building is another thing that Sullivan usually excels at, but this world felt tiny and indeed rather ‘hollow’ as well. Aside from the many info dumps which really didn’t improve the story, I never got a real sense of the entire world. Hollow World (can we please acknowledge what a silly name that is for a serious place?) felt more like a city or even a village.
A pet peeve of mine is when books hide behind a constant talking about God where it doesn’t advance the story or characters. This novel absolutely grated my last nerve with that.
I’m glad I know the author is a much better writer than what he displayed in this book, or I would have put him on my: ‘don’t read anything by this author ever again’ list. I don’t know what happened, but if this is your first novel by Sullivan and you hated it as much as I did: check out some of his other novels. They’re great.

Started great but...

I am sorry - I loved The Ryria series but this book whilst it showed great promise - interesting ideas etc etc....the second half and it's tunnel into gender wars, discrimmination, bullying etc was just tiresome - I am fully aware of such things in the world but really I dont need to hear it rammed down my throat in escapism...