Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crowe by Jessica Townsend

Rating: 4/5

I am very fond of the Nevermoor books. Each one has been fun and charming and, while not particularly clever in terms of plot, interesting enough to make me want to keep reading. Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow continues in that vein, revealing more about the world and about the mysterious group of Wundersmiths that came before Morrigan.

While I still have no idea what Wonder is or what makes Morrigan so special, at least it’s explained much more in this book. There’s something like an actual magic system being built in this book than in the others, and though things are still a bit too much “wave your fingers bang whiz pow” or “think a lot and it will happen,” it’s clear that Townsend is trying to establish some sort of system that makes sense.

In addition, we get some interesting character revelations in this book. While I don’t like that Townsend apparently expects us to applaud Morrigan’s decisions as if she’s an adult rather than a twelve-year-old who barely knows anything (lampshaded slightly at the end, I suppose), I do think that Morrigan as a character has been developed really well and all of the decisions she makes in this book (most of which are fine, but a bit eyebrow-raising at the end) follow from that development. On the other hand, Ezra Squall is developed extremely poorly, fluctuating from “But he was a FUN INNOCENT CHILD ONCE” to “No he’s still evil” to “He’s still evil but not as terrible as this other person” from chapter to chapter. His incentive at the end of the book to do what he did made very little sense to me, and also introduced a completely out-of-nowhere extra villain that just made everything about Squall seem even flatter and poorly contrived.

Despite that, and despite a bit too much harping on the fear and rage resulting from the Hollowpox, I did really enjoy this book. For some reason, I thought this was a trilogy, but apparently it’s not—which is good because there’s so much more to learn about Wunder and Morrigan and everything else Townsend threw at us in this book (like giant spirits and magical tattoos).

Info: Sequel to Wundersmith; Jessica Townsend; published 2020 by Random House

Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy

Warnings: None

Recommended Age Range: 10+