Absolutely riveting.
This book is one of the best reads of the year; frightening, thrilling, excellently-paced, and as close to perfect as it gets. It manages to cross-over/blend several genres flawlessly and the reader never knows from page to page what the next chill will be--and this keeps you turning pages well into the night.
Recommended highly.

Firstly, I would like to thank Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc of the book. This review is based on my personal opinion and enjoyment of the book.

To be continued.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. Because I believe that Guillermo del Toro is a brilliant filmmaker. However, this just wasn't for me. I did finish the book, but it was a struggle. I would like to try another book by Toro in the future, but this one just didn't do it for me.

I enjoyed this one. Creepy, x-filish/Dr Who, with a bit of mystery and magic of sorts. No aliens though. Just the weird, the dark and the occult.

This was a fast moving book. Right off the bat an FBI agent has to shoot her own partner, because he seems crazed. And from there the rampage, the weirdness doesn't end. Soon that same agent is told to summon the mysterious Backwood. A quite an interesting British character, that seems out of time but at the same time knows more about what's going on than Odessa.

As things are pieced together, the picture that reveals itself is disturbing and dark. I liked how this connects to the past. I also liked how gruesome this story was, not holding anything back. And the way the hard parts, like talking about racism, was handled.

This book makes me want to pick up more books from these authors, and even in this series. I need to know more about Blackwood and his travels.

A thoroughly enjoyable blending of a detective novel with the supernatural. Can’t wait for the sequel.

I didn’t intend to spend the last three days speed reading “The Hollow Ones” by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan (Grand Central Publishing 2021; $28). Indeed, I had other things to do—deadlines to meet, a new workout program to keep up with, and my daughter’s wedding to help plan. But I didn’t do any of those. Instead, I caromed around the universe, going back and forth in time, following this complicated by fascinating novel written by two greats in their field. del Toro is a prolific writer, producer, and director who wrote and director the four-time Academy Award winning movie “The Shape of Water.” Hogan, an American novelist, screenwriter, and television producer, who co-authored, with del Toro, The Strain Trilogy. He also authored the novel “Prince of Thieves” that was made into a movie “The Town” with Ben Affleck.
This is not a book for the faint of heart—and I typically fall into that category. But I just had to figure out what was going to happen next after the first chapter. That’s when Odessa Hardwick, a young and inexperienced FBI agent arrives at the scene of a gruesome murder taking place along with Walter Leppo, her seasoned partner. Inside an upscale home, the two encounter the owner butchering his family. Odessa, believing her partner is under attack by the murderer, shoots and kills him. But then the unexpected occurs, Walter takes a knife to the only surviving family member and Odesssa is forced to kill him to save the child. She already is under a lot of stress when she had to question if that was a shadowy figure, she saw fleeing from Walter’s body after his death?
More than likely given the supernatural forces that are in play here starting with why this prosperous homeowner killing his family, why did Walter suddenly take over the job of butchering them, and what the heck is going on anyway? Odessa, distraught and doubting her actions and indeed, her own sanity, is given the assignment while awaiting the results of the inquest into the killing of Leppo, to clear out the desk of ailing FBI agent Earl Solomon who started his career investigating lynching during the early 1960s in the American south.
“Solomon puts her on the trail of a mysterious figure named Hugo Blackwood, with whom the dying Solomon has been professionally — but unofficially — aligned since his rookie days,” says Hogan, who describes his collaboration with del Toro as long talks over breakfast batting around ideas which they then expand until finally turning out chapters.
Hugo, an immortal has seen a lot through the centuries. To solve the mysteries of the moment, they must retrace what happened in 1582 when he was a young attorney and a portal to another world was accidentally opened allowing the evil and dangerous hollow ones to enter ours.
Hogan, who describes the hollow ones as “nasty creatures who live to possess human victims, jumping from host to host” is vague about whether this is the first in a series focusing on Hugo and Odessa solving supernatural crimes. He does acknowledge though that Blackwood’s story which in this novel encompasses England 1582, the Jim Crow South of 1962, and New Jersey in 2019 is only 20% told.
If they do have another book coming, I need to get all my chores done ahead of time so I can immerse myself once again.

The Hollow Ones is the newest horror novel from the duo that brought us The Strain series.

I think the little you know about The Hollow Ones going into it the better. It follows Odessa Hardwick, a FBI agent, who is trying to solve a weird occurrence that happened during one of her cases. The Hollow Ones has plenty of occult elements so if that isn't your jam I'd stay away from this novel. I think it's a good read-alike for readers who enjoyed The Outsider by Stephen King.

I've read reviews that compare this novel to Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I haven't read Relic yet so I can't judge the similarities between the two.

The Hollow Ones for me started off really strong but about halfway through started to lose steam. It does set it up for this to be the first book in a series. We'll have to wait and see if that's the case with The Hollow Ones.

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and Netgalley for giving me an e-copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

The Hollow Ones by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan is a tense thriller of evil and a world that is greater than ours, yet occupying the same space. Of demons and those who hunt them and the men taken by the Hollow Ones.

"....Leppo's horrible grin relaxed, his eyes losing their focus. As she stood there staring, unable to believe what had just happened, Odessa saw something...
A mist, looking like a ripple of heat mirage, rose from Leppo's twisted form. A presence in the room, hovering like swamp gas. No color, only-again-the odor of burnt solder, different from the cordite smoke still wisping out of her gun barrel...
Leppo's body sagged perceptibly, as though something, some entity had fled his body as he died..."

Odessa Hardwicke's life and career fell apart the day she was forced to shoot and kill her partner, FBI agent Walt Leppo. Though the shooting was found to be justified, it has shaken the young FBI agent to her core and has turned her into persona non grata within her own office. No one could quite understand what had happened to force Odessa to turn her weapon on her partner. The Walt Leppo who behaved the way he did in his final moments of life was not the Walt Leppo everyone knew. Especially not Odessa.

Odessa is given a low level assignment to clear out the belongings of a retired agent in the New York office. It would be a good distraction for her and everyone around her. But what she finds will send her searching for a figure known only as John Silence and a mystery that is more ghost story than crime. It will also tie directly to her dead partner and what she saw the moment he Leppo died. What she would learn are called, the Hollow Ones.

Reading the Hollow Ones, I could not help but remember the Denzel Washington movie, Fallen. The creature of evil and its manner of possession are almost exactly the same. So I credit Del Toro and Hogan with writing such a good horror story that I could get past the obvious similarities between Fallen and the Hollow Ones. The main difference is the character of John Silence who has a history in literary horror stories and his re-introduction here is thrilling and tense.

The war between good and evil just got more exciting and the characters Del Toro and Hogan have conjured up here only add to the fun.

The Hollow Ones is atmospheric and fast paced and a thriller not to be missed.

Good fun!

"Sometimes we are not the ones doing the summoning. Sometimes we are the ones being summoned."

The Hollow Ones is the first installment in co-author's Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan's Blackwood Tapes series. Odessa Hardwicke is a rookie FBI agent who ends up killing her partner Walt Leppo after he inexplicably turns violent while apprehending a rampaging murderer. What's most puzzling is that she sees a mist like ripple of heat mirage rising from Leppo's body leaving behind an odor of solder. Odessa's career is on the brink of ending after being confined to desk duty while being investigated whether her shooting was justified or not.

Meanwhile, she is tasked with clearing out the office of a retired FBI agent Earl Solomon's belongings. She finds some odd things, including a room filled with tapes, that cause her to track down the agent who's recently had a stroke and is hospitalized but lucid. When she tells Earl of the strangeness that occurred after she shot Walt, he directs her to leave a specific letter in a mailbox and await an answer from a man known as John Silence. Between Silence's stoicism and mystery and Odessa's curiosity, the two follow a trail of demons, magic, and the occult that leads to the answer of what killed Odessa's partner.

**Apparently, I have a different copy of this book than other reviewers. Others have Hugo Blackwood as the person who works with Odessa not John Silence. For the purpose of this review, I will use Silence even though the series appears to be the Blackwood Tapes. **

This present-day narrative is interspersed with two stories. One revolves around Solomon’s first FBI case in 1962, when he was sent to the Mississippi Delta to investigate a lynching with possible racial undertones that seemed highly unusual. As one of only 3 black FBI agents, Solomon was sent to keep the peace before racial tension destroys the small town after a white man is lynched. When a demonically possessed child tells him to get John Silence, Solomon finds himself living in the world of the occult where simple answers just won’t cut it. His actions will have everlasting affects on Solomon and his career.

The other concerns John Dee, a 16th-century alchemist attached to the English Royal Court who is meddling in areas that are best left alone. Unfortunately, Dee’s efforts are successful and will affect the lives of many people over the next few centuries leaving Silence to battle evil for centuries to come and haunted by a curse that took the one person he loved from him. There is another character in this book called Obediah. Obediah is what's called a Hollow One who travels from body to body, murdering innocents and causing havoc only to leave the body once the host is dead.

I recently uncovered a shockingly familiar coincidence. Has anyone watched the 1998 movie Fallen starring Denzel Washington, John Goodman, and the late James Gandolfini where a fallen angel jumps from body to body causing havoc and murdering innocents while leaving the person without any memories of what happened? I have. The only difference in this book is that when Obediah jumps, it’s only after his host has been killed.

A final note: the authors apparently have chosen to name this as the Blackwood Files in respect to Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence occult detective series which I have not read.

Thoughts: I will forever be a fan of Guillermo del Toro. He’s created some of the most fascinating yet horrific worlds but I don’t think I can ever get past how every single one of his books seems to be written in the hopes of them someday being turned into a film. The summary of this gave me the idea it could be like an old X-Files episode: a young FBI agent investigating a terrible crime turns to a man of the occult after being unable to rationalize the supernatural aspects of the case. No, we’re not talking aliens, but the supernatural aspect actually reminded me far too much of another book which I had only recently read. I’m not sure the close comparisons were what ultimately left me unimpressed or if it was the considerable amounts of gratuitous violence and the fact that I didn’t realize this wasn’t a standalone novel until the final page.

Verdict: I just realized that every single Guillermo del Toro book I’ve read has been him paired up with someone else. Makes me want to give Hogan’s individually written books a shot. In regards to The Hollow Ones, while I can see where the authors plan to take this series, I’m not sure the first installment left me feeling invested enough to continue.

Not quite as creepy as their Strain series but I think fans of this writing duo won't be disappointed.

The Hollow Ones is the latest from Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. I loved their collaboration on The Strain series. It is among my favorite horror series. So, I was very excited to read this first in a new series about an invisible evil that is plaguing New York. I feel like this is a book that you are better off going into not knowing a lot. I really enjoyed this one. It's creepy, suspenseful and engaging.

I thought the world building was done very well. I had no problem understanding the mythology behind the Hollow Ones. The story goes back and forth between the present, the 60s and even earlier in history. I liked how the timelines all tied together. The characters were really interesting, especially Odessa. I really liked that it took her a while to buy into the reality of the situation. It was a very authentic reaction. John Silence was an intriguing character as well. He has a tragic backstory that has me intrigued. I want to get to know him more in future books. This is a great first book in the series. I highly recommend this one. I look forward to the next book.

A modern horror that is disturbing yet engrossing. The Hollow Ones will delight those who enjoy the likes of Stephen King and Lovecraft. Looking forward to upcoming installments!

The story starts by introducing us to Odessa Hardwicke, an inexperienced FBI agent. She arrives at a crime scene accompanied by her partner, veteran agent Walt Leppo. Things go crazy as they confront the man who has snapped and is killing his family, and Leppo ends up dead.

Put on limited duty during the investigation into the incident, Hardwicke is tasked with cleaning out the office of an older agent, Earl Solomon, who introduces her to a mysterious stranger who seems to know all about this and similar strange mass killings that are happening around NYC and nearby New Jersey.

With those plot points in place, the book splinters into three timelines: the present with Hardwicke; the the Jim Crow South of 1962, when Earl Solomon, then a young, untested FBI agent, first meets that stranger named Blackwood, while investigating some lynchings; and England in 1592, where Blackwood (yes the same man from the other timelines) first becomes involved in this paranormal mystery and is introduced to the monsters of the title...The Hollow Ones.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a solid crime thriller with a touch of del Toro's strange horror leanings. This is especially evident in the description of The Hollow Ones form.

I'm giving The Hollow Ones by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan a 4.5 out of 5 stars. The ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel, and I enjoyed this book enough to look forward to more.

I received an e-book copy for review purposes from NetGalley. I was not compensated in any other way. My opinion is honest, and as always, my own.

Book: "The Hollow Ones" by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Rating: 4+/5 Stars
Five Word Description: Harrowing, Gritty, Intelligent, Dark, Occult

Blogger's Note: Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! 

"The Hollow Ones" is a gripping novel filled with mystery, occult magic and danger hailing from authors, Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The book centers on a lawyer turned FBI agent, Odessa Hardwicke who is at the center of an internal affairs investigation after an unusual case ends with her partner dead. While recovering from the confusing and catastrophic event, Odessa realizes that there is more to his death than meets the eye. When she is implicated in her partner's murder, she turns to some unconventional allies for assistance in solving the mystery of not only her partner's death but also a string of rampage killings.

Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan have combined several genres in the creation of this novel. The thriller includes historical fiction and is laced with hints of true crime and a large dose of horror. The ever changing and evolving plot line keeps readers guessing and will break the boundaries of traditional FBI thrillers.

The main character, Odessa Hardwicke, is intelligent, brave and relatable. She struggles with some of the occult magical elements of the story and readers will follow her and start to believe along side her. The other main character, Hugo Blackwood, is also memorable and filled with mystery that evolves throughout the book. In the middle of the book, Blackwood and Odessa have a back and forth style of banter that was entertaining and really solidified my interest in both characters. While reading, I found myself cheering for them and hoping that they would be able to escape the looming darkness unscathed.

The novel is fast paced with consistent action in the plot, however there were occasional instances where the pace dropped due to a slightly overwhelming amount of details. Although the information all related to the story and was well written, it felt a tad excessive. Also, I would have preferred to read this book on a kindle or similar e-book format as I found myself referencing a dictionary occasionally throughout. With that being said, I would highly recommend this book! It was a thrilling ride that left me quickly turning pages with Agent Hardwicke, working to unearth the truth behind the murders.

Recommendations:
Pick up this book if you are interested in thrillers and also enjoy supernatural stories.
I would recommend picking up an e-book copy as some of the language and concepts are better understood through the use of a reference aid.

I was expecting horror, but this was more of a paranormal thriller.

That said, I enjoyed every word of this enthralling and fast paced story.

I was so excited to be able to read and review The Hollow Ones early since I love Guillermo and Chuck's due writing. I believe I have read all their books together and this one is another favorite.

This book starts with Detective Odessa who ends up shooting her partner who has never shown any aggression but did the night of a murder. She sees something supernatural. She is under investigation and put at a desk job where she finds some belongings to another agent, Solomon. When she goes to return his belongings she finds he is dying but has a past and tells her to write a letter to John Silence who takes her on a journey of why people are randomly killing and doing crimes and dying with the cycle continuing.

This book gives background story on Solomon and how he met John Silence over 60 years ago, the things he saw, the evil.

And then goes back to John Silence and how he is still alive over 400 years later.

This story was fast paced, thriller with supernatural elements. The ending did fall a little flat for me as i felt it was rushed, some characters weren't as fleshed out and I would like to see this as a series if it isnt already. But overall I enjoyed this read, I loved the characters especially the old agent Solomon and I loved how fast paced it was.

thanks Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for the E-Arc!

The Hollow Ones is an uncomfortable mashup of many, better, thrillers. Admittedly, I may have expected too much from the director of so many of my favorite films.

New FBI Agent Odessa volunteers for desk duty after shooting her own partner in a justifiable homicide. In the course of her work, she meets occult detective Hugo Blackwood.

Again, my main problem with the book was its blatant copying from other plots. I also thought Odessa was rather blah. The most non-politically correct portion was the cringe-worthy lynching of a white man. Though this was probably written well before the current BLM protests, it’s still not a good idea.

Overall, for the book itself, 3 stars. However, I do want to call out the audiobook’s narrator, Brittany Pressley. She makes the book seem profound with her excellent reading voice. In fact, she alone raises The Hollow One’s rating by one star to 4 stars.

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Audio and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

THE HOLLOW ONES: The Blackwood Tapes Vol. 1
Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan
Grand Central Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1538761748
Hardcover
Horror/Thriller

Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan are back with another collaborative effort. Those who read The Strain trilogy or watched the television series adaptation on fX are probably still experiencing recurrent nightmares, or perhaps comparing the current situation to the one which took place in the latter stages of the novels and the video series. Del Toro and Hogan, alas, are apparently not permitting any mental or emotional respite to occur among their readers. Exhibit A for that proposition is the newly published novel THE HOLLOW ONES --- subtitled “The Blackwood Tapes Vol. 1” --- which though complete in itself promises wild literary rides for some time to come.


THE HOLLOW ONES, as with the best roller coaster rides, begins sedately enough before rocking you back into your seat. The story --- after a Preamble containing a brief but important history lesson --- starts with lunch in Newark, New Jersey. Rookie Odessa Hardwicke and veteran Walt Leppo are partnered-up FBI agents. It is quickly established that Odessa is the bright upwardly mobile half and Walt the eccentric but smart half of the equation. You don’t want to get too attached to Walt because he isn’t around long. The pair has their lunch interrupted by an urgent, all-hands-on-deck call to a hot crime scene. They are in the thick of it when Walt inexplicably goes homicidal. Odessa is forced to kill him in the line of duty. That is troubling enough, but the icing on the poisoned cake is that as Walt dies she thinks she sees some sort of mist leaving his body. She keeps that particular observation to herself, at least at first, while an investigation is being conducted. Odessa, while waiting to be cleared back to field duty, is assigned to clear out the office of Earl Solomon, an elderly agent who has had a stroke and appears to be near death. That task leads her to Solomon’s bedside. Solomon is bedfast but somewhat lucid, stroke notwithstanding. It develops that the two of them have more than a few things in common, a bond that leads Odessa in an extremely strange manner to a very enigmatic character named John Silence. The present-day narrative of THE HOLLOW ONES, meanwhile, is interspersed with two stories. One concerns Solomon’s first FBI case in 1962, when he was sent to Mississippi to investigate a lynching with possible racial overtones but which seemed highly unusual. The other concerns John Dee, a sixteenth-century alchemist attached to the English Royal Court who is meddling in areas that are best left alone. Dee’s efforts are unfortunately successful and will affect the lives of many people over the next few centuries. In the present, Odessa finds herself in an uneasy professional relationship with John Silence, who by turns regards her as an ally and an annoyance. What is important to her is that Silence believes her story regarding what she saw after she killed her partner. He gradually reveals to her the answer to what occurred as the pair attempt to track a centuries’ old evil which is loose in our world and creating havoc and which seemingly cannot be destroyed.

Anyone who has ever witnessed a sudden or abrupt personality change in an acquaintance and wondered, “Why did they do that?” will find much to love in THE HOLLOW ONES. Del Toro and Hogan borrow just a bit from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos while invigorating it enough to perhaps drawing the curious back to the source material. One could be forgiven for taking the sense that THE HOLLOW ONES is perhaps a better screenplay than a novel --- not that there is anything wrong with that --- but horror fans who read this occasionally shocking tale will be back for seconds. They will also eagerly await the second volume of Blackwood tapes which seem to be promised in the subtitle. THE HOLLOW ONES is not a bad way at all to scare yourself silly, and --- who knows? --- it might even be true, at least in part.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2020, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

"Sometimes we are not the ones doing the summoning. Sometimes we are the ones being summoned."

Odessa Hardwicke is a rookie FBI agent who ends up killing her partner when they attend a crime scene. She can't forget what she saw at the moment of Walt Leppo's death: "a mist, looking like a ripple of heat mirage, rose from Leppo's twisted form" leaving behind an odor of solder. Odessa can't bring herself to tell anyone about that when she's taken off duty and put on leave. Confined to desk duty while being investigated, she's tasked with busywork and assigned to clear out the office of a retired FBI agent in New York. As she clears out Earl Solomon's meager belongings, she finds some odd things that cause her to track down the agent who's recently had a stroke and is hospitalized. Their meeting leads Odessa to an enigma, John Blackwood, who is an occult detective. Centuries old, he is on a mission to save the world from evil spirits known as the "Hollow Ones." In an epic that covers a man's quest to bridge the schism between science and magic in 1582 London, to 1962 in the Mississippi Delta, to present day New York and New Jersey, the mission is simple -- to stop the foul entities from wreaking mass destruction and havoc. NO SPOILERS

What a thrill ride from start to finish! I was a bit nervous after reading some of the reviews that suggest the book is somehow similar to another classic author's or a different popular series (that I have also read), but I disagree. I found it quite absorbing and I couldn't stop until I finished it over a couple of hours. The whole time I was reading, I could see the movie version and I can't wait to read the next installment in what looks like a new series by this talented duo. I've read other books by Del Toro and Hogan, and enjoyed them as well. I think your reaction to this will depend on several factors, including your mood and your desire to read this genre. I found it a welcome change of pace and a definitely outside of my usual fare.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for this e-book ARC to read, review and recommend.