Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine's peculiar children are in for quite the adventure in Hollow City as they enter loops in an effort to outwit the wights all without the aid of their leader, Miss Peregrine. She is still in bird form, the state she we left her in after the first book, leaving Jacob, who decided to stay with the peculiars rather than going home, at the helm. Together, the children must figure out the intricacies of time travel and unravel the evil intentions of their pursuers, the wights and hollows, guided by an inexperienced kid with an ancient book, Map of Days (that is lost early on in their travels).

They find that many of the ymbryne have been transformed, like Miss Peregrine, or done away with all together. There will come a point when there will be no hope of reversing the spell, so the kids are racing against time by leaping through time loops. The ability to enter loops is the very thing that the wights are after. By nabbing the souls of the peculiars, quite literally through the soles of their feet, the dark creatures are enabling hollows to enter loops and obliterate the peculiars' world.

As their options for escape narrow, Jacob's feelings for Emma grow. Predictably, she is the main reason he stayed in the first place and why he doesn't want to leave. Why couldn't it have been his love of his grandfather or his yearning for adventure outside of his mundane life back home? Despite this cliche, I liked the circle-of-life symbology of Jacob falling in love with the same girl that his grandfather was so enamored with decades before and the fact that he is faced with the same difficult decisions that come with straddling two worlds.

With the reinstatement of old photographs throughout the book, as in the first, I was struck with the idea of mixing old and new and how time really just repeats itself. We are all in a loop. We live in a time when an endless stream of photographs are taken, sent, and posted online daily. With so many more images out there, they mean so much less. Yet, with all the changes we are still making the same mistakes, falling in love with the same people, and hurting in the same ways that our parents and grandparents did. Jacob comes to this realization as he is trying to decide whether to stay or go, thinking, "There was romance in the unknown, but once a place had been discovered and cataloged and mapped, it was diminished, just another dusty fact in a book, sapped of mystery. So maybe it was better to leave a few spots on the map blank. To let the world keep a little of its magic, rather than forcing it to divulge every last secret." (p.368)

Riggs has captured a lot of magic in this second installment and set the scene for a third book in the series with quite the cliff hanger. Though, there is some predictability, it's the gems of insight and connection to a deeper meaning that will have me cracking open the third book.