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ESMES REVIEW:
I was excited to see this author make it to the finals because she was a finalist of ours a few years ago. I really enjoy her writing style; it tends to be dark, gritty, and features unique urban settings. That’s what I was hoping for, and this book did not disappoint!
If you want to read something that feels like a turn-of-the-century/1920s setting with mobsters and bootleggers, then this one could be for you!
Although these characters would likely be thought of as morally grey, with few qualms about killing folks they think deserve it, they are also a found family and care about each other. They have no ill will towards the general public, and don’t go around murdering folks for no reason – there’s always a business reason why someone is getting the shit kicked out of them or worse. These guys are kind of like mobsters, who have an analogue for bootleg beer and alcohol in the 20s. In this world, The Providence Company is in control of the production and distribution of the drug known as “hallow.” What sets The Providence Company apart, and makes them different from the 20s gangs, is that they’re also heavily tied to the religion of the Aulds — a religion that comes complete with machine gun-wielding nuns. The Aulds and the humans live side by side, and often at a glance can look the same, but they’re vastly different once you look past surface level.
The drug, hallow, isn’t for humans; it’s for the Auld bloods to take to touch their magic and gain old powers. It’s thought that hallow brings them closer to their god, and the realm of The Hallows. If humans take it, it’s almost certainly a death sentence, but that doesn’t stop folks from trying. Once they take hallow, the Aulds come in different “categories” of magic users, creating a more structured/hard magic system. Some of these magic users are more common than others; there are folks known as Stouts who are super strong, dashers who are super quick, and others that are rarer, like Cam. Cam is a “sixer,” and he can enhance all five of his senses to the point he can smell familiar people in a crowd like a dog, and he can also sense the emotional states of others, which gives him six enhanced senses, aka a sixer. Hallow use is not without consequence for the aulds — if they take too much at once or are using too frequently, they can start to mutate. There’s a woman whose arms switched to be on one side of her body, and another lady starts to grow horns that she’s trying to hide since you’re retired from services once you start to transform. If you keep going, the results can be fatal. Sometimes when you transform, you lose your mind, too, and have to be put down. Not always, but sometimes.
What’s odd is that these transformations are usually predictable. You can usually tell that someone is riding too close to the sun, and they’re going to take it too far and transform. There haven’t been many “incidents” in years where auld bloods lose themselves and end up needing to be killed for everyone’s safety… and now Aulds are transforming, dying, and being murdered, and the gang is trying to figure out why. There are people who are transforming and dying when they shouldn’t have even been close to that point yet, and it’s sending warning flags that there’s something else going on. All of this is coinciding with the first Auld blood allowed in the government in generations. Although the aulds are powerful, they aren’t the pinnacles of society. The government has been run by humans for a long time, and although Cam thinks to himself that Jasper will just be a token figurehead and that he won’t be able to make things better for the Aulds, there’s hope that things are changing. Until folks start dying.
The world-building here was top-notch; everything was laid out smoothly, cleanly, and without clunky info dumping. What I loved most was the scene setting/scene building experience, I struggle a lot with envisioning what’s going on in a book, I don’t always get a clear “head movie” but with her writing style that didn’t just focus on character faces but rather character impressions/aura and the feeling of a scene, I was able to create a much more in-focus head movie. It felt gritty, real, and noir-ish. A lot of people describe this as grim dark, and I suppose it is, it’s not a happy place to live… but that being said, this book isn’t without humor, which kept things from getting suffocatingly dark, at least by my taste.
The pacing and writing were fantastic. I absolutely flew through this book and didn’t find there to be a lull or a drag in the middle. I also love that this is a standalone. I rarely read on to book 2s in a series, so to get the complete picture in one go is a huge boon. I’m actively seeking out more stand-alones since it seems to be my natural reading style anyway.
KRISTEN’S REVIEW:
The Hallows is an urban fantasy that takes place in a noir-ish 1920s era city, where humans and Auld Bloods live together. Auld Bloods are essentially human, but when they take a drug called Hallow, it triggers ancestral powers in their blood. Hallow is extremely regulated by the Providence Company, who keeps several squads of ‘Assessors’ who keep the peace between Auld Bloods and humans. Camellia is a Sixer – when he takes Hallow, his senses become extremely heightened, which will hopefully help him investigate some horrible Auld blood deaths that have been linked to an illegal (and obviously bad) batch of Hallow.
I enjoyed The Hallows so much that I read it in two chunks. It was an easy book to get into, with prose that flowed really well and sucked me into this city and its different magical powers, floating nuns, secrets, and monsters. I would lay down with it at night promising a chapter before bed and end up reading until the wee hours because I didn’t want to stop.
Camellia and his cohort from the Assessor home base known as ‘The Garden’ (with monikers to match), Daffodil, Lavender, and Forget-me-Not were characters that were easy to root for. Even Forget-me-Not, who is more of a minor character in this story as a whole, had me doing some serious emoting over here.
The mystery itself kept me guessing up until the very end, which I always cherish in a mystery. I love to guess at bits and pieces, but when a mystery actually blindsides me, it makes it all the better.
I had a solid 8.5/10 stars of a good time with The Hallows. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who likes a noir mystery with a big scoop of superpowers involved.
FINAL SCORE:
I enjoyed my time with this so much! My personal score for this is an 8.5…. Kristen’s score is an 8.5 — our math whizzes have already figured this out, but our final score is an 8.5!