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This is an informal review of Dennis R. Upkins' Hollowstone. The author has managed to use DMCA complaints against me in the past for a post that primarily relied on using sentences/passages from the book (with a little additional commentary), so here's another go at things.
-Saying that Hollowstone needs “some” editing is a massive understatement. Whether we're talking about form or content, the book feels as if no one besides the author bothered to read the manuscript before publication. For example, Upkins' prose violates basic grammar rules, particularly when it comes to punctuation. Commas appear only to create comma splices, and dialogue often sounds stilted and awkward because sentences are not properly broken up. (Speaking of dialogue, all the characters sound the same, too.)
Additionally, there are severe vocabulary issues in Hollowstone. Cal, the protagonist's best friend, says: “Finally, I get to fellowship with fellow writers, my brethren.” Well... fellowship is not a verb. Noah, whose perspective the story is told from, mentions that an alum donated a lot of money “...to the school in the subversive hopes of having a building named after him.” Here, it's obvious that subversive doesn't mean what he thinks it means. These are just a couple examples of words being used incorrectly, but it's a persistent problem in the text.
Re: content, there are a lot of scenes that, in my opinion, an editor would've elected to cut in order for Hollowstone to feel more like a Young Adult book. Characters that we're supposed to like—such as Nolan, the music teacher, and Caleb—say really heinously inappropriate things about women on multiple occasions. I'll get to some specific examples later.
-The novel is very poorly researched. In Hollowstone, The Art of War is by “Shang” Tzu (when in fact the author is Sun Tzu). Noah plays the violin in a music theory class, and “saws” away at his instrument. Neely (the only non-heterosexual woman in the text, who ends up being Noah's cheerleader and lacks a life of her own) does some research on the protagonist's behalf, and the supernatural elements of the novel are lazily explained. Neely tells Noah re: the school's location: “This place is a hodge podge of demonic energy. After the European settlers arrived, many warlocks met here and practiced the dark arts in secret. The warlocks went underground when the Salem Witch Trials hit but that doesn’t mean there still isn’t a supernatural presence here.” The Salem Witch Trials predate any permanent settlements and Westward expansion by... well, a lot of years, and if Upkins had done his research he could have easily found a better explanation for the existence of demonic energy or whatever. The “official” reason does not make sense at all.
-So many scenes in Hollowstone are awkward to the point of causing secondhand embarrassment. One example that sticks out for me is when Noah and Caleb go to an open mic event, and the latter performs a poem. Upkins' includes the entirety of it in the text. For the record, the poem's around 350 words and takes up two pages on this Microsoft Word document. We're also supposed to think the poem is great, but in reality it's very bad. For example, one stanza reads: “A small kiss / A kiss that triggered all of this / A kiss that sent him spiraling / A kiss that brought reason to Faust’s plight / For such a token could easily launch a thousand ships.” A stanza that's repeated multiple times goes like this: “He dances to surrender / He dances to forget / He dances to find the symmetry, / He dances to numb / He dances to mend / He dances for it to end.” Yep. Less severe secondhand comes from the very dated way in which Upkins' characterizes cliques—there are only two in the school, apparently, and it's the standard (and this point old) “dumb jocks” versus smart nerds thing.
-Since the author spends a great deal of time promoting himself in progressive online spaces (especially ones for LGBT individuals), I've not only been personally recommended Hollowstone, but I've also had to see this offensive train wreck pop up on websites made for feminists, lesbians/bisexual women, the LGBT community, etc. I thus believe it's worth mentioning that the novel really fails at tackling issues of inclusion. While some good points are made about race and class, Upkins is incapable of being subtle—and class issues are especially heavy-handed and ham-fisted. I've lived being a poor person in a much wealthier school system, and while high school students are cruel, in my experience they don't begin to rival the incredibly exaggerated version of class entitlement that Upkins depicts.
Women and non-heterosexual youths (there are no lesbians, nor or there any trans* young adults) are handled incredibly poorly. Caleb is pretty nasty and objectifies female characters constantly, lecherously describing certain women (like Brianna) only by their looks and level of promiscuity. By the way, this is how he treats women he has no issues with. When it comes to women Cal doesn't like, he shames their sexuality and either accuses them of being “skanks” (his proof: they slept with him) or of having STDs. Nolan, the music teacher, tells a female students to swallow her gum in the same way that she swallows for the football team. These are just a few examples.
I'm not sure why I've been recommended to read this as Gay or LGBT YA. Noah is straight, and the two bisexual characters (Cal and Neely) are only depicted as being in opposite-sex relationships, if they're in relationships at all. The gay subplot, which involved two minor characters, is very melodramatic and offensive. Spoilers ahead, but one character who is perceived as gay (and is in fact gay) is constantly bullied. His boyfriend, who's on the football team, comes out in order to help prevent some of the bullying. Things don't go the way he anticipated and one's left for the dead and the other decides he's going to shoot up the school (until the straight hero tackles him). When Upkins has talked about their scenes in interviews, he's made it a point to say how they're not “effeminate” gay men (implying that bullying and violence are OK in that context?) and how people should be more mindful of bullying because sometimes “LGBTQs,” as he calls us, fight back. (So, school shootings are justified? What?)
-Saying that Hollowstone needs “some” editing is a massive understatement. Whether we're talking about form or content, the book feels as if no one besides the author bothered to read the manuscript before publication. For example, Upkins' prose violates basic grammar rules, particularly when it comes to punctuation. Commas appear only to create comma splices, and dialogue often sounds stilted and awkward because sentences are not properly broken up. (Speaking of dialogue, all the characters sound the same, too.)
Additionally, there are severe vocabulary issues in Hollowstone. Cal, the protagonist's best friend, says: “Finally, I get to fellowship with fellow writers, my brethren.” Well... fellowship is not a verb. Noah, whose perspective the story is told from, mentions that an alum donated a lot of money “...to the school in the subversive hopes of having a building named after him.” Here, it's obvious that subversive doesn't mean what he thinks it means. These are just a couple examples of words being used incorrectly, but it's a persistent problem in the text.
Re: content, there are a lot of scenes that, in my opinion, an editor would've elected to cut in order for Hollowstone to feel more like a Young Adult book. Characters that we're supposed to like—such as Nolan, the music teacher, and Caleb—say really heinously inappropriate things about women on multiple occasions. I'll get to some specific examples later.
-The novel is very poorly researched. In Hollowstone, The Art of War is by “Shang” Tzu (when in fact the author is Sun Tzu). Noah plays the violin in a music theory class, and “saws” away at his instrument. Neely (the only non-heterosexual woman in the text, who ends up being Noah's cheerleader and lacks a life of her own) does some research on the protagonist's behalf, and the supernatural elements of the novel are lazily explained. Neely tells Noah re: the school's location: “This place is a hodge podge of demonic energy. After the European settlers arrived, many warlocks met here and practiced the dark arts in secret. The warlocks went underground when the Salem Witch Trials hit but that doesn’t mean there still isn’t a supernatural presence here.” The Salem Witch Trials predate any permanent settlements and Westward expansion by... well, a lot of years, and if Upkins had done his research he could have easily found a better explanation for the existence of demonic energy or whatever. The “official” reason does not make sense at all.
-So many scenes in Hollowstone are awkward to the point of causing secondhand embarrassment. One example that sticks out for me is when Noah and Caleb go to an open mic event, and the latter performs a poem. Upkins' includes the entirety of it in the text. For the record, the poem's around 350 words and takes up two pages on this Microsoft Word document. We're also supposed to think the poem is great, but in reality it's very bad. For example, one stanza reads: “A small kiss / A kiss that triggered all of this / A kiss that sent him spiraling / A kiss that brought reason to Faust’s plight / For such a token could easily launch a thousand ships.” A stanza that's repeated multiple times goes like this: “He dances to surrender / He dances to forget / He dances to find the symmetry, / He dances to numb / He dances to mend / He dances for it to end.” Yep. Less severe secondhand comes from the very dated way in which Upkins' characterizes cliques—there are only two in the school, apparently, and it's the standard (and this point old) “dumb jocks” versus smart nerds thing.
-Since the author spends a great deal of time promoting himself in progressive online spaces (especially ones for LGBT individuals), I've not only been personally recommended Hollowstone, but I've also had to see this offensive train wreck pop up on websites made for feminists, lesbians/bisexual women, the LGBT community, etc. I thus believe it's worth mentioning that the novel really fails at tackling issues of inclusion. While some good points are made about race and class, Upkins is incapable of being subtle—and class issues are especially heavy-handed and ham-fisted. I've lived being a poor person in a much wealthier school system, and while high school students are cruel, in my experience they don't begin to rival the incredibly exaggerated version of class entitlement that Upkins depicts.
Women and non-heterosexual youths (there are no lesbians, nor or there any trans* young adults) are handled incredibly poorly. Caleb is pretty nasty and objectifies female characters constantly, lecherously describing certain women (like Brianna) only by their looks and level of promiscuity. By the way, this is how he treats women he has no issues with. When it comes to women Cal doesn't like, he shames their sexuality and either accuses them of being “skanks” (his proof: they slept with him) or of having STDs. Nolan, the music teacher, tells a female students to swallow her gum in the same way that she swallows for the football team. These are just a few examples.
I'm not sure why I've been recommended to read this as Gay or LGBT YA. Noah is straight, and the two bisexual characters (Cal and Neely) are only depicted as being in opposite-sex relationships, if they're in relationships at all. The gay subplot, which involved two minor characters, is very melodramatic and offensive. Spoilers ahead, but one character who is perceived as gay (and is in fact gay) is constantly bullied. His boyfriend, who's on the football team, comes out in order to help prevent some of the bullying. Things don't go the way he anticipated and one's left for the dead and the other decides he's going to shoot up the school (until the straight hero tackles him). When Upkins has talked about their scenes in interviews, he's made it a point to say how they're not “effeminate” gay men (implying that bullying and violence are OK in that context?) and how people should be more mindful of bullying because sometimes “LGBTQs,” as he calls us, fight back. (So, school shootings are justified? What?)
