I didn’t know what to make of the first few minutes of the audiobook. A plucky voice introduced his craftsman home in Seattle along with roommates Big Jim and bloodhound Dennis. Strange things had begun happening, like a renegade eyeball flopping out of Big Jim’s head and prancing onto the lawn. I had not read any reviews of the book, so it was puzzling to say the least.
What laid ahead was a sweeping apocalyptic adventure led by S.T (short for Shit Turd1), an American crow, with the help of Dennis. We learn that S.T. is more human than crow and has been isolated from his community since his hatchling days, preferring the comforts and company of MoFos, what he calls humans. S.T. feels the alienation when he has to team up with animals of every stripe, feather, and fin to face a mounting and persistent threat to everyone’s survival.
S.T. fights not only the onslaught of sick MoFos, but the destiny he must fulfill as a member of a much bigger world than the one inside his living room. He rejects his place, mourning the changing landscape around him and the loss of humankind. S.T. frequently extols the many inventions of humans and lauds what he believes is their unmatched creativity: Cheetos® (crunchy only, puffs are for barbarians2), poetry, Tinder, and the works of Jackson Pollock to name a few.
I’d been so mesmerized, my heart as light as the barbs of a semiplume, thinking of how a MoFo was capable of carving out the world to be anything they wished… I was witnessing the slow extinction of MoFo culture. And it was absolutely devastating.
In the previous newsletter3, what I described, the communication of plants from the forest to those still trapped in homes, is known as web. The sky has aura and the ocean has echo. There are animals who bridge the communication systems like seagulls, that know both aura and echo. Squirrels are just promiscuous assholes. What opens up for S.T. during this journey is an entire ecosystem outside the perception of humans.
Humans were not the only bastions of creativity and beauty in the world. Sure, there were Combos, a miracle of engineering and taste sensation, but aura resonated and vibrated every hollow bone, relaying information, gossip, and warnings.
Always go with the tide. Creativity is not a uniquely human trait. Creativity is everywhere, in the barb of every feather and audacious sapling.
- Ghubari, African gray parrot
In the story, humans are no more critical than a mushroom or a lapping wave. Each living thing has a role to play and humans have taken more than their share. While S.T. laments this apocalypse, his murder4 imparts painful but sage wisdom about the ebb and flow of nature which includes humans. They must die. They must evolve like everything else. The imbalance of nature at their hands has undergone corrective action.
I have always been discouraged from flowery writing. I was a science major and took too long explaining things. I had to be more concise. My husband even bought me A Moveable Feast by Hemingway to help. It was the type of gesture that stung because I knew he was right. Cell biology could not be told as a short story. Grignard reactions, which help form carbon bonds, either did or did not occur. My education was as black and white as the texts I pored over.
Hollow Kingdom is a new education, where wisps of hair snag dancing dust motes and bone matrices are not made strong with calcium but memory. Buxton peels back a veil to a world as innovative and connected as any human creation, perhaps more so. We realize how fragile and susceptible to corruption humans are and how resilient the many strands of nature are in the face of such massive destruction. Nature fights what chaos humans wrought and band together under codes of murder, that demand cohesion and loyalty of its members.
I consider Hollow Kingdom a text. The work is thick and heavy with descriptions of places and environments unknown to not only humans, but the protagonist himself. Intelligence and bravery are revealed not through the terse and snappy calls of S.T., but in his realization after efforts are spent. In many ways, the pulsated or cawed language of nature far more accurately describes who someone is.
Buxton rattles off a menagerie of birds and one imagines their mosaicism. Her undertaking is not merely a spattering of genuses, but reveals the careful research devoted to the authenticity of the story. Both the reader and S.T. get to see the variety of community members and is awestruck by their majesty.
What is the “hollow kingdom”? Hollows are what humans are called because they are disconnected from nature. It’s a sobering description of a populace sent in a frenzy over electronic chirps instead of the calls of sparrows.
For me, Hollow Kingdom is a book to be read, digested, and reviewed anew. It’s a sprawling and thrilling adventure with much to ponder in between expletive-laden insults of penguins. It is why writers are told to read more than write, to take in more air then they expel because the act of breathing is instructional. To know what is possible and what is well done lies among the pages of Buxton’s saga. I am better having read it.
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He is immensely proud of this name.
I will die on this hill. Extra credit for fans of Cheetos® Simply Crunchy White Cheddar.
A murder is a group of crows but also a pretty good movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Tom Berenger.