The Hollow Boys

March 20, 2023
This arresting series kickoff from Smith (The Wolf at the End of the World) grips from the start as it introduces its inventive milieu, its flawed but fantastically powered hero, its playful worldbuilding, and a host of tantalizing mysteries. In contemporary Toronto, billionaire 18-year-old Will Dreycott lives in a white tower, hunting for his missing parents, laboring over the impossibly successful comic book series, and, in secret, actually living his superhero creation’s life. As the real-life Dream Rider, Will is a costumed crusader in the dreamscape, searching for evidence of missing children, fleeing nightmarish emotions called Emojis, and eventually encountering creepy gray children he’ll learn are called “Hollow Boys”—missing Toronto street kids who, through elaborate witchery, have been stripped of their will and forced to take on this terrifying new form.
That’s just the start of Smith’s vigorously imaginative scenario. Complicating matters is Will’s agoraphobia. The boy who seems to have everything, including the wealth to make individual floors of his building museum-quality recreations of Paris and Egypt, can’t bring himself to breathe outside air. That’s a fascinating flaw, worthy of Marvel comics in the 1960s, a trait the deliciously detestable villains will of course exploit. Smith draws a telling contrast between Will and the broke-but-free life of Case, a street teen whom Will meets, develops a crush on, and vows to help—but can’t follow outside his tower.
Strange, often appealing creatures (like the delightful doogles) and characters fill out Will’s world, and the Hollow Boys, Maras, Emojis, and other original dangers have a perfectly calibrated creepiness—they’re deadly, and scenes of action and suspense thrum with tension, but the novel’s still always fun. Pacing and prose are tight despite the novel’s generous length; the dialogue’s crisp and engaging, and the reversals and revelations are cleverly plotted. Smith takes every advantage of his original dreamworld’s possibilities, building to a satisfying ending with plenty of mystery left to explore.
Takeaway: Thrilling YA fantasy whose billionaire teen superhero flies through dreams but can’t step outside.
Great for fans of: Maggie Stiefvater's The Dream Thieves, Robert Jackson Bennett.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

June 12, 2023
After his ancient-artifact-dealer parents suddenly disappeared while the family was on a jungle expedition eight years ago, then-nine-year-old Will Dreycott, who is half Japanese and assumed half white, returned home alone with no memory of how they went missing. Now 17, an agoraphobic billionaire, and the creator of the Dream Rider graphic novel series, Will hides one big secret: the world from his novels is real, and when Will sleeps, he becomes the comics’ eponymous superhero protagonist and spends his nights gathering clues to crimes that he then passes on to journalist Harry. When teen boys start vanishing around town, Harry recruits Dream Rider along with Case, a Black teenager with the ability to hear voices warning of danger, who’s searching for her younger brother, Fader. Smith imbues this series opener with otherworldly intrigue, developing an elaborately layered plot via bouncy prose that capably shifts between the dream realm, with its monstrous inhabitants, and Will’s insular life. Depictions of close-knit relationships shine brightest throughout the novel, especially the familial bonds between Will and his parents and between Case and Fader, as well as the protagonists’ budding romance. Ages 12–up.