Hollow Fields, Volume 1

by Madeleine Rosca

Book Overview

A full-color revisit to the critically acclaimed steampunk hit Little Lucy Snow was supposed to attend a prestigious boarding school; however, a macabre twist of fate finds her enrolled instead at... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933164247
• ISBN13: 9781933164243
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Very desperately waiting for a books 2 and 3 to be in stock.

My middle school library had a copy of book two and this series has been somewhere deep in the back of my mind ever since. Now I own it. For anyone seeking out more content by this author, she has a series on Webtoon called Rise From Ashes.

Anyone old enough to appreciate Harry Potter should enjoy the magical atmosphere

Hollow Fields puts a steampunk spin on the magical boarding school story. The first volume starts with a familiar setup--spunky outsider kid trying to make it in a snooty boarding school--but author Madeleine Rosca starts tossing in curve balls almost from the beginning. The school is run by steam-driven robot teachers, the students are the children of mad scientists and evil dictators, and the curriculum includes such nonstandard subjects as grave robbing, cross-species transplantation, and the construction of assassin robots. Lucy Snow is the only normal kid there, having stumbled into the school by mistake and foolishly signed a contract without reading it. She soon learns that Hollow Fields Academy is a sink-or-swim place: The student with the lowest grades each week gets sent to the old windmill for detention--and is never seen again. The other students give Lucy the cold shoulder, and one girl, Summer, is so mean, she has rigged up her stuffed rabbit with a boxing glove. Just as Lucy is about to give up hope, a mysterious talking box pops up and helps her with her projects, including building a killer robot and transforming her stuffed dinosaur into a useful escape tool. The plot thickens in the second volume, when the back story of the school is revealed: The principal, Miss Weaver, and all the faculty have far outlived their natural lifetimes by patching together new mechanical bodies. Now those bodies are falling apart, and Miss Weaver is trying to prolong their lives indefinitely by transferring souls from one body to another. The students sent to the windmill are guinea pigs for the first part of the process; she removes their souls, but the process is seldom complete. The remaining students have their own agenda, and Lucy soon stumbles upon a secret laboratory where Summer and the other students have been working on some extracurricular projects of their own. She barely escapes being crushed by a giant robot and ends up in the windmill. And then things really heat up for Lucy. Rosca lets her imagination run wild as students and teachers alike break out crazier and deadlier weapons, from giant lobster claws to a flying golem, in a lengthy climax. Rosca's use of flashbacks, splash pages, and telling details give Hollow Fields a cinematic feel. Her art is precise and complex, and she creates a dazzling array of steam-powered and clockwork robots. Everything creaks and hisses and clanks, cuing the reader to what an old castle full of robots sounds like on a rainy night. Hollow Fields is too complex and too scary for young children, but anyone old enough to appreciate Harry Potter should enjoy the magical atmosphere and clever creations that populate this book. -- Brigid Alverson

awsome

a great manga. interesting story, good charecters i realy liked reading it. i will definetly be reading the next book.

Utterly Charming - in a "Take over the world!" kinda way...

Little Lucy Snow inadvertently ends up at a boarding school for the children of evil geniuses and mad scientists... awesome! A perfect mashup of Harry Potter-esque magical boarding school life, with A Series of Unfortunate Events-style dark humored gothik fantasy, told in captivating manga style. Lucy is everything you'd want in an spunky manga heroine, but the dark humor offsets the expected tropes nicely, creating a hybrid work that perfectly captures some of my favorite aspects of East and West comic and fantasy traditions. The story and images are refreshingly appropriate for younger teens, despite some dark themes. The art is consistently lovely throughout, and shows comfort and mastery of the manga style. Some concept art at the end of the first volume shows a Hollow Fields that could have been, demonstrating that the author also has equal facility with western styles, and is certainly a creative force to keep an eye on! My only complaint is that there's not more yet, however the imminent release of volume two promises to correct that deficiency. Highly recommended.

Aussie Aussie Aussie

Upon reading that Madeleine Rosca came 3rd in the International Manga Awards, I felt great pride as an Aussie and bought the book to show her my support. The book is really cute with all the ongoings, and it turns out its now my mother's favorite. She's not a native english speaker, but since this book aims for a younger audience she managed to get into it more. (except for the scientific jargon that was just way way way out of her league, but hey give and take) I really liked this book and am glad to see some Aussies seeing the light of day in the Manga World. Looking forward to Maddy's new volume, and if you ever do read this Maddy, we're proud of you. =)

I Want To Read More!

I think that Hollow Fields has a good story. As soon as I saw this book at my school book fair, I knew this was going to mean something to me. I read the back. It sounded interesting. I read the first few pages, I bought the book! I read it with TOTAL interest. It turned out to be better than I had expected with the way I could see the characters moving and hear the rain fall. I was so involved in that book, that if someone disturbed me, I wasn't happy. When I first saw it, I also knew it was a whole new adventure, just waiting to be discovered. You may think I'm just saying that, just because I'm a middle school girl, but the book really grabbed my attention! When I finished reading Hollow Fields, I wanted my mom to read it too and was disappointed that the second volume wasn't ready for me to read. I hope the next volume comes out soon!!!