Hollow City by Ransom Riggs Review: A Thrilling Dark Fantasy Sequel Worth Reading

The graphic novel adaptation delivers a genuinely inventive dark fantasy sequel — one whose stakes are immediate, its cast clearly defined, and its world considerably expanded from the first installment.

Hollow City picks up the moment Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children ends: Jacob Portman and a group of peculiar children flee in boats from the hollowgasts, battered by a storm, and make landfall only to find wights already hunting them across the mainland. Their one hope is Miss Wren, an ymbryne believed to be in London, who may be able to reverse Miss Peregrine's dangerous transformation — she is trapped in the body of a bird, and her human self risks being lost permanently. The journey the children take to reach her threads through a menagerie time loop populated by peculiar animals (including Addison, a speaking dog), a traveling Gypsy caravan, an ambush on a railway, and ultimately the bombed cityscape of wartime London itself. As ransomriggs.com notes, the book also confronts Jacob with a meaningful personal decision about his relationship with Emma Bloom. The central urgency — reach Miss Wren before Miss Peregrine is gone forever — gives the narrative a propulsive, ticking-clock quality across its entire arc.

One of Hollow City's recognized strengths is its deliberate expansion of the peculiar mythology. Where the first book established the rules and the initial cast, this installment introduces the broader ecosystem: Miss Wren's menagerie loop, the significance of The Tales of the Peculiar as a navigational text, and the larger network of ymbrynes imperiled by the wights. Wikipedia's plot summary reflects a story that layers new lore — peculiar animals, additional time loops, the "peculiar capital of the world" that London represents — without abandoning the momentum of a chase narrative. Shelf Awareness, as Wikipedia's reception summary records, wrote that Riggs "masterfully builds suspense while revealing new information about the peculiars' world, making it at once sinister and captivating," and that a surprising twist positions the story toward its third installment.

Across its source material, Hollow City is noted for the discipline with which Riggs defines its large main cast. Reviewer commentary at victoriagracehowell.com identifies eight primary characters — Jacob (the human leader), Emma (fiery and loyal), Bronwyn (motherly with super strength), Enoch (cynical), Horace (cowardly but kind), Hugh (underestimated), Millard (wise), and Olive (tender) — and credits the novel with establishing each personality quickly enough to prevent the group from blurring together. This character architecture matters especially in a graphic novel format, where Cassandra Jean's illustrations carry the burden of differentiating a crowded cast visually. The ensemble dynamic also supports the book's thematic core: as several reader sources note, Hollow City is concerned with self-doubt, resilience, collective courage, and the cost of choice under pressure.

Hollow City is not uniformly praised as an improvement on its predecessor. Readers at booksincharacter.com rate it favorably but note it lands slightly below the original — and some find elements such as the peculiar-animal sequences less compelling than the human-centered tension of the first book. Separately, reader commentary flags that the novel's middle stretch loses some forward momentum before the final quarter reasserts urgency and delivers several plot reversals. This is a structural critique that recurs in the source material: the book earns its ending, but the road to it requires patience. For readers coming to the graphic novel adaptation specifically, this pacing dynamic is worth bearing in mind, as the condensed visual format may handle the quieter middle passages differently than the prose original.

The Yen Press graphic novel, published July 12, 2016 and illustrated by Cassandra Jean, is rated for readers thirteen and up. It serves as the visual edition of a novel that debuted on the New York Times bestseller list and was cited by Booklist — as Wikipedia's reception summary records — as a volume fans "will be pleased with," with the observation that the series was continuing. Readers already invested in Miss Peregrine's peculiar universe who prefer or want to supplement their experience with a panel-by-panel adaptation of the sequel are the clearest audience. Those new to the series should begin with the first graphic novel installment; Hollow City assumes full familiarity with its predecessor's world, rules, and characters from its opening pages.