Hollow City

This article is about the book written by Ransom Riggs. For other meanings, see Hollow City (disambiguation).

“	Strange, I thought. How you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.	”
–Jacob , Hollow City

Hollow City is the sequel to Ransom Riggs's novel Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. It was released on January 14, 2013. It is the second book in Ransom Riggs's first Peculiar Children trilogy.

It starts right after the first book ends, and focuses on the rise of a terrifying antagonist named Caul, who is also Miss Peregrine's brother.

Epigraph

“	And lo! towards us coming in a boat An old man, frizzled with the hair of eld, Moaning: "Woe unto you, debased souls! Hope nevermoreto look upon the heavens. I come to lead you to the other shore; Into eternal darkness; into fire and frost. And thou, that yonder standest, living soul, Withdraw from these people, who are dead!" But he saw that I did not withdraw...	”
–Dante's Inferno, Canto III

Synopsis

September 3, 1940. Ten peculiar children flee an army of deadly monsters. And only one person can help them—but she’s trapped in the body of a bird. The extraordinary journey that began in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom.

Plot

Escaping the island

The story begins immediately from where the first novel left off. Alma LeFay Peregrine's peculiar children, Emma, Millard, Claire, Enoch, Fiona, Horace, Hugh, Olive, Bronwyn and their new friend Jacob, use little boats to escape Cairnholm. The kids are surprised by a sudden storm and Bronwyn and Olive's boat is overturned. Both survive and get rescued by the others.

All of their things, including their copy of the Map of Days, is lost to the sea. They reach the island and see blimps controlled by wights above them. They rest in a cave whilst hiding from the wights but they soon reach the beach in their submarines causing the children to flee into the forest. They managed to evade the wights during the night.

In the evening the children read a story from the Tales of the Peculiar chosen by Miss Peregrine about a giant named Cuthbert who rescues peculiar animals from hunters by lifting them onto a mountain, creating a menagerie of peculiar animals. Cuthbert kills one of the hunters by stamping on him, the next day a witch hired by the hunters family comes to turn him into stone and he sinks into a lake. Unbelievably Claire discovers a lake with a rock formation that looks like a giant's head. Emma decides to wade out to the rock and climbs into the mouth of the formation, discovering a new time loop.

However, the new loop turns out to be exceedingly dangerous when they encounter a hollowgast bent on eating them. The children manage to kill it, and are then greeted by a strange humanoid and a talking bulldog by the name of Addison MacHenry. Addison thanks the peculiars for killing the hollowgast and shows the children to Miss Wren's menagerie, where they meet various peculiar animals. Addison was brought to this loop by an ymbryne named Miss Wren, who they learn has left for London to help her ymbryne sisters. Miss Wren is the only remaining uncaptured ymbryne. Her spies, a flock of peculiar pigeons, have told her that the ymbrynes have been captured and are being held in punishment loops which were originally designed to hold wights. Now the wights and their hollows are guarding these loops. With all of the ymbrynes captured, there will be no one to maintain the time loops and they will collapse.

The peculiars decide to reveal Miss Peregrine to Addison and explain to him that she is unable to revert back to human form. Addison is certain Miss Peregrine has been poisoned so that she cannot change back. He tells the peculiars that they must find another ymbryne to help her change. The more time Miss Peregrine spends as a bird, the less likely she will be able to return to human form. Addison tells Emma and Jacob that she has at most three more days before returning to human form will become impossible.

Searching for Miss Wren

The peculiars decide they must go to London to find Miss Wren and have her heal Miss Peregrine. Addison tries to dissuade them, telling them the loops are guarded by hollows. However, Emma and Jacob realize this is the only way they can save Miss Peregrine. Claire and Fiona stay behind at Miss Wren's loop as Claire has become ill and Fiona volunteers to look after her. Addison gives the children bundles of Armageddon eggs (explosive eggs) and peculiar sheep sweaters. The children say goodbye and return back to the 1940s, where they are instantly chased by a band of wights with dogs. They jump onto the back of a traveling gypsy wagon.

The band of gypsies eventually shelter the children from the wights because peculiars and gypsies were allies in the past, as they are both outsiders of some sort. When the children leave the camp to board a train to London, the wights capture them along with the gypsies that welcomed them the night before. Mr. White, the wight in charge, tortures the gypsies in front of the children until Hugh, the bee controlling peculiar, unleashes a swarm upon the wights that kill all 6 of them. The peculiars then hurry on to London by train.

In war torn London, they rush through a crowd of refugees and begin to travel through the capital's streets. The bombed capital offers even more dangers than the countryside. Consulting the Tales again, the kids read a passage called The Pigeons of St. Paul's, which describes the peculiar pigeons that reside at the renowned cathedral. Knowing that Miss Wren has an affinity for peculiar animals, they find the pigeons in a ruined time loop below the cathedral. In this same time loop, they find two boys, Joel and Peter, hiding in the tomb, who explain that hollows and wights had attacked their loop and killed or captured everyone. The two boys lead them to the entrance of a well which Millard, Emma, Horace and Jacob explore. In a house, they find another peculiar, Melina Manon (a telekinetic). Melina believes them to be wights and threatens them. However, Horace proves his peculiarity by talking about Melina's past, saying he saw it in one of his dreams, and earns her trust. Jacob senses two hollows coming, so the children flee the loop. Barely escaping the crypt, they find themselves under a London air raid still being chased by the hollows.

They run into a random house where they meet two sisters, Esme and Sam, and hide with them. They learn the sisters were supposed to be evacuated and separated, but Sam, the elder of the two, would never allow the separation, so they've been hiding in their home ever since. Esme begins crying from the bombings so Enoch uses his power to make his clay soldiers dance, making Esme laugh. Jacob realises that the hollows will sense Enoch's power, and they suddenly hear the hollows charging through the door. Leaving Sam and Esme behind, the children run from the hollows into the street but a bomb explodes on the house, killing the hollows. The children emerge from the rubble, seeing that the peculiar sheep wool sweaters protected them from the debris. They frantically search for Esme and Sam in the rubble, finding Esme still in the bath tub and Sam impaled through the chest. The children are horrified, believing Sam is dead, but she is unaffected by the hole in her chest and turns out to be peculiar. An ambulance arrives on the scene but the driver faints when he sees the hole in Sam's chest. The children argue whether they should steal the ambulance or not but Miss Peregrine punctures the tires with her beak. They begin to follow Winnifred, Melina's peculiar pigeon, and ask Sam and Esme to join them but Sam dismisses them.

They follow the pigeon into the London underground through huddles of refugees until they come to a locked door. The peculiar pigeon knows the code but doesn't cooperate with them. Miss Peregrine squabbles with the bird and gets the code out of it, telling the children the code by tapping the numbers with her feet. Miss Peregrine then shockingly kills the pigeon, angering the children, particularly Melina. They enter a tourist loop and dress themselves to the loop's time period to blend in. The loop leads them to a circus.

While wandering the circus, a peculiar boy directs them to a building that is frozen by ice despite the warm weather. Outside this building, they find Miss Wren who leads them inside the peculiar headquarters of the frozen edifice that prevents wights from entering. They find out that hollows and wights had attacked the headquarters and in a panic a young girl named Althea used her powers of ice to freeze the entire building, including the hollows and wights. While Miss Wren treats Miss Peregrine, Millard discovers that the wights extract peculiar souls and then consume them in order to pass through time loops. They talk to Sergei, a folding man who tells them that he wants to create an army to fight the wights and the hollowgasts.

Captured by wights

With this knowledge, the group gathers around Miss Peregrine and Miss Wren for the final moments of Miss Peregrine's transformation. Instead of their kind caretaker, it is Miss Peregrine's wight brother Caul who emerges from the falcon form. The children realize that they took the wrong falcon from the submarine. Caul tells them he has the building surrounded by wights and that he has attacked and raided Miss Wren's menagerie, taunting the children about Claire and Fiona's fates. They attempt to hold Caul prisoner but he threatens to kill Althea as he puts a sharp icicle to her throat. She begins to freeze him, but Caul stabs and kills her. The ice having melted due to her death, the wights break into the building and take everyone captive.

The wights take the captured peculiars to a subway station in the present and begin loading them onto the train. But while they are trying to force Emma on, Emma heats up her hands, melts through her handcuffs, and burns one of the wights on the face, saving Jacob. Meanwhile, to Jacob's shock, Bronwyn tears Joel-and-Peter away from each other, causing them to scream and shatter the train's windows and knocking Jacob, Emma, and the wights down. Emma and the wights go unconscious immediately, while Jacob is on the brink of following suit. He watches in horror as the others are being loaded on the train and taken to an unknown destination. Jacob and Emma are saved by Addison, who pulls them into a phone booth and licks them awake.

Jacob answers a call from his frantic dad. Their conversation is interrupted by a hollow, which shatters the phone booth and grabs Jacob by the throat, slowly strangling him. Jacob, on the edge of surrendering, gives in to the pain he feels whenever a hollow is near. Deep down inside, he feels a whisper, and lets it rise, speaking in the language of the hollow and telling it to "Back off." Upon hearing this, the hollow immediately lets go of Jacob and sits back. Jacob quickly tells his Dad that he's ok, and that he loves him and his mother. Jacob hangs up and assures Addison and Emma that the hollow won't attack. Then, he turns back to the hollowgast. Speaking the hollow language, Jacob orders the hollow to stand, and it does.

Characters

Photographs

Main article: Hollow City Photographs

Hollow City

Contents