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10/19/2004 Entry: "THE HOLLOW KINGDOM--"Solidly" Good, har (Preeti, Margaret)"

Hollow Kingdom

A site visitor suggested we should note Clare B. Dunkle's THE HOLLOW KINGDOM as the winner of the 2004 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature since it has a romance. So I checked this book out of the library and find that the strange courtship between the goblin king and a young girl in rural Regency England is central to the story. While in some ways unsettling all the way to the end, this was a very good read indeed. Thanks, site visitor!

Kate, a very young woman, and her even younger sister go to live with relatives in the countryside. There the older catches the eye of the goblin king in the woods, and he begins his pitiless (I like that word--it's used in the book and it's a perfect descriptor) mission of stealing her away to become his bride.

Marak is a king, but he's really no prince. He's old, misshapen, a widower, and generally kinda scary. And yet Dunkle makes him grow o