Customer Reviews

In the Coils of the Snake: Book III -- The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Book three is likely the best of them all. This draws our adventure of the mysterious Hollow Kingdom to a satisfying close. The author seemed notably more comfortable with herself and the tales and maybe it was that the first two books gave her great practice to make a nearly faultless final adventure.

Following the death of Marak, Catspaw takes his place as king, preparing to marry Miranda, a human girl raised to be Catspaw's wife by Marak himself. But things quickly don't go as planned when elves return to the kingdom and an offer of an elvish bride pushes Catspaw to renig on his promise to Miranda.

Miranda flees the kingdom once she is aware that she's being set aside and all that she was raised to do was for naught. The tales takes a spinning trail through Miranda's plight as she leaves the goblins and finds the elves... or rather the elf lord finds her. Either way, this book certainly redeemed the whole saga with its climatic ending and surprising and pleasant twists.

Had the ending of this book not been so gratifying, it would have suffered a lower score. Readers may find Marak Catspaw and Nir the elf lord too irrational for their own good and that in itself causes much conflict between the two races. What also made this book enjoyable was the underlying hint of racism and prejudices. The elves think the goblins barbaric and vice versa. Both peoples saw themselves as the better race and saw all faults and weaknesses only in their enemy.

Five bright stars for closing the story of the Hollow Kingdom with a bang. Dunkle proved her mettle in this book and she may just find a niche as popular fantasy writer alongside Sharon Shinn and Robin McKinley.

I love this series, I really do. But the second and the third books of this series, in my mind, have steadily declined. Maybe I was too much involved with Kate and Marak's story to want anything else. But I feel that the writing is less impacting. I haven't read such a good teen fiction fantasy series in a while. In the first book, the story was captivating and it drew you in, and a major plus, the characters didn't say stupid things, and romance and kissing wasn't a deluge in the book to add something interesting. But I just didn't feel that way with the subsequent books. Mind you, this book can stand on it's own, but I've placed the first book on a pedestal.

If you enjoyed the first two books in this trilogy you will fall in love with this book! In the Coils of the Snake kept me quessing about the ending throughout the whole book! Better than the second book and almost just as good as the first. If you enjoy fantasy, love, and a good story I recommend that you read this book! I promise that you won't be able to put it down!

If you're looking for a fairly light but enjoyable read, In the Coils of the Snake fits the bill pretty well.

I'll admit I have some problems with Dunkle's work: I think she has the seeds of some excellent ideas, but doesn't develop them as far as she could have, which ends up weakening her work overall. That and she has a tendency to ignore internal consistancy on small but important things, which drives me batty.

First off, Dunkle ended Close Kin with heavy, hit-you-over-the-head-with-the-point-foreshadowing that Til is Bad News, and will cause severe trouble for Catspaw in the future.

Fast forward to In the Coils of the Snake: we find that Til continues to be a witch supreme, but now she's left the kingdom for the human world and spends her spite on her daughter, Miranda, earmarked by Marek as Catspaw's bride. What happened to the foreshadowing at the end of Close Kin? Did Dunkle just forget about it?

Another quibble: Miranda goes on and on about how Til has abused her--but where's her father in all this? Neither Miranda or Dunkle seem to pay him much attention, though we know from a flashback that he's still alive and hasn't fled the household to get away from his harpy of a wife. So why--if Til's abuse of Miranda is so obvious and frequent--does he never lift a hand to help his daughter? Why, through her frequent bouts of abuse, does Miranda never wonder why her father doesn't try and stop her mother or even seem to think about him at all?

It's little things like this that tend to drive me wild, because it shows a lack of concern for consistency and lazyness--it's not that hard to keep track of things like this.

Other then that, the book's plot is fine, but thin. It's basically "here are the goblins, here are the elves, there are big misunderstandings and Miranda has trouble adjusting to Elf life, but everything's fine in the end." Catspaw continues to be an arrogant, essentially unlikeable jerk, but the narrative does call him on it at several points. Looking at Til's character through the whole series, she's basically a waste of space; what exactly was the point of having her, beside being needed to birth Miranda and mess with her head? So she could cause Kate some angst and have vague threats that she's going to be a threat to goblins thrown around, which are never fulfilled?

Kate is Kate and remains awesome. Miranda is difficult, but mostly likeable, and Lir, while a nice and slightly quirky guy, doesn't really have a lot of substance to his character--though Dunkle's elves are the classic "play all day, no cares in the world" type, so it's not really that surprising.

Overall, In the Coils of the Snake falters somewhat but it's still a light, enjoyable read despite the flaws.

...still highly enjoyable. Both Miranda and Arianna are well-drawn characters who react quite differently to their new situations. This book gives us more of an insight into the world of the elves than the previous books, but the world of the goblins and humans suffers because of it. Kate, my personal favorite character, is barely in the book at all, Sable is demoted to a plot device, and Emily, who was the focus of the second book, is mentioned in one scene and then disappears completely for the rest of the story. Though this book is a great end to the series and a fine stand-alone volume (Marak Catspaw is great and Seylin is still one of the best characters in the whole trilogy), I would still have liked to have seen more of an attempt to tie the stories together. I would also have liked to have had more of the humans' world also. How many years have passed since Kate and Emily left their family lands? There was less of a sense of time with this story than the previous ones. Still, I really enjoyed the book and I'm sad to see the series over.

I do like these covers. The rich, sometimes earthy tones aptly reflect the individual themes of the books, in my opinion. Plus the style of artwork keeps the characters sort of dreamy and vague and I am therefore free to go on picturing them however I please and that is always a good thing. IN THE COILS OF THE SNAKE continues the story of the goblin court and its longtime enemies the "we're one step ahead of extinction" elves. This third and final volume in the Hollow Kingdom trilogy takes place thirty years after Close Kin: Book II -- The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy and begins with the unthinkable.

Marak is dead. *sob*

And as if that isn't enough, we find out that all these years he has been secretly grooming a young human girl to be his son Catspaw's bride when he passes the crown to him. The girl, Miranda, is now living in the hollow hill with them and is utterly bereft now that her one friend (and father-figure) is gone and she is expected to take up the mantle of queen to a young and inexperienced king. Her fragmented life becomes further complicated when, on the eve of their wedding, Catspaw puts her aside in favor of a young elf of impeccable pedigree. The move is without malice, as Catspaw faces a stalemate with the elf lord Nir. Nir offers the young Arianna as part of a peace treaty between his people and the goblins. When Miranda finds out her entire purpose in life no longer exists, she refuses Catspaw's offer of sanctuary and runs away. Right into the clutches of the elf lord, who finds her a very useful sort of hostage indeed.

This book held everything I hoped for the conclusion of the trilogy. The story splits its time between Miranda and the elves and Catspaw's difficulties wrangling his elf bride and his attempts to subvert Nir's plans. I wasn't as attached to Catspaw as I was his father (Marak was The Top), so I was not as invested in his story. But Miranda was a lovely, sympathetic character and it was a pleasure to watch her find a place where she felt at home at last. I was also glad to finally find a truly noble elf in Nir, after the painfully vicious and unhappy band in Close Kin: Book II -- The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy. And I had to smile at how frivolous the goblins thought the elves and with what disgust and horror the elves, in turn, viewed the goblins. In the Coils of the Snake also, rather notably, has a proper ending, perfect for the book itself and for the trilogy as a whole.

I forgot how much I liked the first book until I read the third book in this series. Miranda is the main character in this book. She lives with her mother who is abusive to her. She does not have any friends, either. The only person that she feels a connection to is Marak, the goblin king. The goblin king told her that she will be the next goblin kings wife, and he grooms her to be a goblin queen.

Once Marak dies and his son Catspaw becomes king, Catspaw has 300 days to marry. Miranda moves from her abusive home into the lavish elf queen quarters. Meanwhile, Catspaw looks forward to marrying Miranda, but he meets an elf woman with extraordiary magical abilities. Catspaws duty is to get the best queen for his people. Miranda has no idea that there is another female that could take the role of goblin queen.

The characters were well developed and the plot was good. From my description, it sounds something like "Days of Our Goblin Lives" or some soap opera. However, I am a picky reader, and I liked this book. Unlike other readers, I didn't notice any anti-feminist issues, nor did it offend me in any way, and I am female.

I can't think of a better way to end a trilogy than this. I loved the first book of "The Hollow Kingdom", was reasonably pleased with the second, and now must say that the quality and magic of this third installment compares to the original. Similar emotions of love and despair and choice are brought forth in an imaginative and gratifying way that still has its originality--while the first book dealt with the choice between a human world and that of the fantastic, this deals with people utterly unsure of where they belong, desperate for a real choice.

Dunkle's writing is still as lush, simple, and poetic and always, still conjuring up a rather Victorian aura that nods to all the old myths and legends of "the little people". And yet this particular story has grown to something more akin to what Tolkien would have written for young girls had he ever taken such a genre. Call me crazy, but I relish the clear problems of elf society (too many authors have praised it beyond the ridiculous.) But it is nice to see a few good elves that give plausibility to the story of war and prejudice.

The feminists, however, will not be pleased. I hate to say it, but part of me loves the idea of being kidnapped by a roguish goblin to his underground kingdom, and indeed these are books about women who are pretty much at the mercy of the males. And yet... they all strike me as powerful, remarkable girls who always truly have a choice of their fates.

Wonderul storytelling to a truly romantic tale. Thank-you!

At first the book seems depressing, and the heroine gets on your nerves, but if you stick with it for a few chapters you get totally sucked into the story. The characters are vivid and realistic, the story line is full of unexpected twists, and the ending is perfect! You even start to feel sympathy and relate to the heroine and she looses her annoying ways. I loved this whole series, it's one I will be rereading many times and I would highly recommended it for the more mature reader.

There wasn't nearly as much drama as in the first one. I don't think either the second or this one could ever meassure up to it, but it wasn't a bad story, either. Dunkle jumps far into the future to the death of the king and the crowning of Catspaw. If you are hoping to revisit Emily or Kate, forget it. They are hardly mentioned at all. Instead, the author introduces us to a new character, Miranda. Miranda, apparently, had been promised from before her birth to the goblins when Marak decided to release Til to the human world. Miranda is Til's daughter. Til's temperment does not improve from the second book, being that most of Miranda's childhood consist of her mother berating her to her siblings and staff. All that Miranda has to look forward to are the weekly visits from Marak. Finally, when she turns 17, her death is staged and Miranda is taken down into the goblin city to wed Catspaw and become a queen, only, the day of her wedding she is told by Catspaw he can't marry her. Instead Catspaw must marry an elf girl with great powers. You see, a tribe of elves showed up and according to their treaty with the goblins, they will give the elf girl in exchange for peace.

Miranda, runs off thinking she would kill herself, but instead runs right into the arms of Lir, the elf lord, who decides to make her his prisoner.

So you see, much different plot and characters, but still an interesting plot line. I think you'll enjoy it.