The Spirit Hollows
by P.R. Brewer
Lockegee Books, 2021
333 Pages
Ages 14-17
Spirits have invaded our world. Why it happened is a mystery, but they are now aided by Spiritists who worship them and other folks with their own agenda. These spirits are kodama, or elementals, not human ghosts, (there are enough different types to fill a catalogue,) but they are dangerous to the touch, and driven by a force that makes them deadly.
Normally I avoid these mash-up comparisons, but this story is clearly Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co. meets Manly Wade Wellman (or, for older horror fans, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters in the world of Old Gods of Appalachia).
Once the mist of grounding myself in the setting cleared, I found myself in a parallel timeline where spirits had torn through a rift, an event called “The Great Awakening,“ leaving the mountain towns called the Hollows separated from the rest of civilization by vast wastelands. Set in an Ozark-like mountain landscape in a present day that has both horse-drawn carriages and steampunk-styled technological anachronisms (but without the overstated brass flying machines, thank you,) and I settled in for an intoxicating ride.
Zora Coldiron, a 15 year-old engineer and inventor who uses crutches of her own design, meets her half-brother Quinn, (Pine-box Prosser to his friends,) who is ready to set out on his own, and they decide to try their hand at ridding the Hollows of the dangerous wave of spirits. Quinn’s mother runs a funeral home, which was an interesting plot point, but sadly it wasn’t really explored. Zora has fabricated a spirit-disintegrator that creates interference based on knowledge of their frequencies. Zora can whip up a new invention overnight, which is kind of stretching my belief, but allows her to craft effective weapons against the entities that can send trees flying or whose touch can cause spirit sickness.
During their first success clearing spirits from a trade route, the duo meets a mysterious parasol-carrying woman, about Quinn’s age, named Signe who can see spirits and is interested in restoring a balance between spirits and humans. Initially at odds, they become fast companions. Signe doesn’t call herself a “spotter,” but was born with pale white skin and has special ultra-violet spirit energy that helps her to see spirits and talk to them. She sympathizes with the spirits while Zora and Quinn try to blast them into the ether.
Lured to a job at a mansion by wealthy Evelyn Fontaine, leader of a group of Spiritists, Quinn and Zora narrowly escape a bloodthirsty hount drawn to them by spirit beacons, lures of the Spirit Queen’s own technological design. But more dangerous than Fontaine and her cadre of creepy cronies is the appearance of a harbinger, the “Voice of the Spirits,” an entity that terrorized Zora as a child, and who can reach into her mind to strike at her raw emotions. It has the ability to summon other spirits, even powerful elementals, into this plane.
They find assistance in other spotters, including a ranger, an old school friend of Quinn’s named Paige Zhu, and the man who wrote the book on spotting spirits… who is soon killed in an encounter with a water-bound. They learn that Zora and Quinn’s father once hunted The Voice, so now left without guidance, they travel across The Hollows to enlist his assistance. If they don’t find The Voice, it promises to be responsible for a Second Awakening that would decimate the Hollows. Will Zora’s weapons be a match for it?
Brewer’s adventure has hints of both romance and loneliness, and when it was over I found myself missing the characters. His storytelling is effective at capturing that backwoods flavor with a touch of steampunk. The vardos, a map of the villages, and hill-folk place names added depth, and the spirits he describes are unique. I will certainly be picking up Brewer’s next book set in the Hollows, I can feel that he has only scraped the top layer of exploring this rich worldscape.