A 2021 book by Brian Catling, Hollow is a Surrealist Low Fantasy story set during a time when reality is slowly falling apart.
In Europe, there exists Das Kagel, a giant mountain rumored to be the ossified remains of the Tower of Babel. At the foot of this mountain, the Monastery of the Eastern Gate has descended into chaos, much like the inquisition has plunged the rest of society into turmoil. The monastery oracle, a divine creature, has died, and now the war between the dead and the living that the monastery keeps in check is threatening to spill out. A new oracle, escorted by a group of mercenaries led by Barry Follett, is on it's way. Every man in the team has an abhorrent past, and were chosen as the oracle can only be fed bones steeped in sins. But the road will be long, treacherous, and there is very little guarantee the men won't kill each other before their journey does.
Meanwhile, hideous creatures are appearing throughout towns, attacking people or tempting them to sin and witchcraft. It is soon realized that these creatures bear a striking resemblance to the denizens of the hellish visions of Hieronymus Bosch, and so Monastery of the Eastern Gate monks Father Benedict and his assistant Dominic must set out to discover what is birthing these beings before the situation spirals out of anyone's control and the arrival of the oracle becomes pointless.
This book provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: Some of Follett’s band, like Pearlbinder, come across as downright likeable. They are still absolutely not good people.
- Abstract Eater: Oracles can only consume human bones that have been steeped in confessions, with different kinds (regretful, unrepentant, self justifying, etc.) giving the bones different flavors in a process fittingly called The Steeping.
- Army of Thieves and Whores: Follett’s band is made out of terrible human beings, himself included. Giving normal men the job would have starved the Oracle to death, as it literally feeds off confessions.
- Awful Wedded Life: Clumvux and Meg, the two peasants who serve as point of view characters for their side plot. The marriage is completely broken, Clumvux treats meg like a house appliance and Meg despises him in turn.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Clementine eventually gets his immortality and escapes into the Gland. However, Benedict says that its an even worse fate than the fighters in the Gland of Mercy and that whatever the Abbot will become from the tortures of that place is not something anyone should ever lay eyes upon.
- Berserk Button: Most of the mercenaries have one, and it’s normally enough to drive them to murder. Follett hates literacy due to past trauma involving spies, Pearlbinder hates anyone who abuses horses, Tarrant will not tolerate any mention of his dead family, Alvarez hates the law and lawmen.
- Big Bad: It turns out Abbot Clementine was behind the death of the previous Oracle, and thus the events of the plot. He also plans on doing… something esoteric… to the new Oracle. All in pursuit of eternal life.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Averted Trope. While most of the cast is gray or black, Meg, Benedict, and Dominic are undoubtedly good people. Though Good is Not Nice is also in play.
- Brown Note: To witness the Gland of Mercy drives many men insane. Only those who can withstand it can become monks of the Eastern Gate.
- Church Militant: The Spanish Inquisition has some sway over the lands around Das Kagel, their laws ruthlessly enforced by the caballistas.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Some town guards harass Follett and his band and threaten the Orcale, leading to Folett's band promptly slaughtering them all with practiced ease. There is a reason the church is paying these sociopaths so much to make the journey.
- Cosmic Keystone: Oracles are important for the balance of the universe, and normally the Eastern Gate monastary only goes a few days between replacements. The fact that the previous oracle Quiet Testiyont died early and unexpectedly is the cause of most of the plot.
- Creepy Twins: The Calcas twins, who are just as murderous as the other mercenaries and manage to unsettle them with their cryptic behavior.
- Deal with the Devil: Tarrant made one where he murdered his own family in order to gain the ability to transgress time through occult magic. His debt gets called right before the stories climax, and he drops dead into a cold corpse before everyone’s eyes.
- Decoy Antagonist: In initial chapters it seems likely that Benedict, with his abrasive attitude and tendency towards forbidden research, is going to be an antagonist. In reality, it is Clementine who is the mole in the Monastery
- The Dividual: The Calcas twins act as if one person in two bodies, in a way that really creeps the other Mercenaries out. When one goes missing, the other begins a descent into insanity.
- Dwindling Party: Predictably, the Mercenaries begin to die one by one. This does not come as surprise, and Follett paid them an insane amount of money because all knew that not everyone would be making it to their destination.
- Eldritch Location: The Gland of Mercy, it’s essentially the collected horror of mankind’s death, sin, and suffering. Anyone who views it while lacking the faith required to survive has a chance to go insane.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Pearlbinder is disgusted when he sees the riders in the Gland of Mercy pushing their horses past the point of no return.
- Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The Kid is evil in a simple, brutal way that most of the other mercenaries are not, and he gleefully murders a family of a woodsman with so little guilt Follett doesn’t even bother to choose him for the Steeping afterwards. His attempts to be The Gadfly fall flat because he is incapable of being anything other than cruel even when attempting to joke.
- Forever War: In the Gland of Mercy is an eternal war between the damned, refered to as the “Triumph of Death”.
- Good is Not Nice: Benedict, who can be a stern hardass but is absolutely genuine in his mission. His pursuit of esoteric knowledge is, despite initial impressions, only to better serve God.
- Meg, after she becomes temporary queen of the Woebegots. She slaughters an entire Inquisition stronghold and frees all the slaves, to the joy of the town.
- The Gadfly: Averted. The Kid tries to be this, but fails to be funny and instead the entire party hates his guts.
- Immortality Seeker: It is considered a forbidden line of research, and called "Satans greatest lure", but Abbot Clementine seeks it anyway.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The unfortunate fate of the two guards Follett kills in town, both run through with a single thrust of his lance.
- Insufferable Genius: Part of what makes Benedict a Jerk with a Heart of Gold is that he has little patience for people who aren’t as smart as he, which is to say almost everyone. Not that intellectual rivals like Clementine fare much better with him.
- Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Meg finally gets her revenge on the Inquisition, killing them to a man with the help of her army of Woebegots. Absolutely no one complains, and even Benedict in his new position as Abbot pointedly turns a blind eye to the act.
- Low Fantasy: Though many of the elements are fantastical, especially the Gland of Mercy (and endless battle of the dead), Das Kagel (the fossilized remains of Babel) and the Woebegot (Boschian monsters come to life) the normal goings on are grounded in reality enough that the end result is this.
- Madness Mantra: Most of the Mercenaries only have a Mask of Sanity. When participating in The Steeping they tend to stray into this.
Tarrant: "An emperor sought harm, and harm, and harm, and harm, and harm, and harm and harm-"
- Mask of Sanity: As stated above, the Mercenaries are an unbalanced bunch. Follett and Pearlbinder are probably the sanest, while the rest have chilling moments during their respective Steepings where they come absolutely unhinged and it is shown just how broken they are.
- Mutual Kill: Pearlbinder and Follett eventually kill eachother simultaneously over the fate of the Oracle, which has gleefully mashed Follett’s Berserk Button
- Our Monsters Are Weird: The entire race known as the Woebegots. Being the works of Hieronymus Bosch brought to life, they don't get much weirder than this.
- Public Domain Character: A bafflingly obscure example in Gef, the Woebegot mongoose. A talking mongoose named Gef purportedly inhabited a farmhouse on the Isle of Man in the 1930s, receiving much tabloid press coverage at the time.
- Rule of Symbolism: Though of the same order, Benedict and Dominic have personality traits associated with the orders that share their namesake. Benedict is stoic and content to stay in the monastery, while Dominic has a much more emotional personality.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Follett has lived the majority of his life on the battlefield, and the only time he shows anything resembling satisfaction and happiness is during life or death combat.
- Smug Snake: One of the Mercenaries, the Kid, is this. His death is unmourned.
- Sociopathic Soldier: Follett, who is a veteran of many wars. While most of the Mercenaries are sociopaths, only Follett, Alvarez, and Pearlbinder really conduct themselves with any kind of discipline or dignity enough for the "soldier" title to still apply.
- Tower of Babel: The Tower has long since fossilized into a stone mass and become indistinguishable from a mere mountain, albeit very tall and oddly shaped, that the locals call "Das Kagel". The books and the stones have been pressed together into one from the massive weight of the structure and the passage of time, and eating these pieces grants incomplete knowledge of whatever the books used to contain. It is also the home of the Woebegots, who are eating the shards of it to gain sentience.
- Troll: The new Oracle. While it saves its most malicious and lethal behavior for the mercenaries, it still acts rude and immature to the monks even as it gladly helps them. For example it pulls some cosmic strings to get Rome to make Benedict an abbot, but insists he calls himself “Abbot Split Lip the Ugly”.
- Uncertain Doom: a reoccurring trope. Several of the Mercenaries go off to what are almost certainly their death (such as a the surviving Calcas twin climbing Das Kagel alone.) but with the story not confirming their death either way.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The exact location of Das Kagel is never made clear, although given its German name and the Dutch names of many of the townsfolk, one may assume somewhere in Northern Europe...but it's also inside the Spanish Inquisition's jurisdiction and has a coastline to the east.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: How much of the Gland you can perceive seems to depend on how spiritually developed you are. The faithful Dominic is able to see it in full, including that Clementine is a participant, almost immediately. The Mercenaries who catch a glimpse of it from Das Kagel, however, experience something like their vision blurring and shifting when they try to focus on it, and actually attempting to focus on and comprehend it causes the surviving Calcas twin to be driven insane. That they can now fully understand what they are seeing is what finally tips Pearlbinder and Follett off that they have died and joined the damned in the Triumph of Death.
