Happy Thursday, friends! I’m here today as part of the blog tour hosted by Toppling Stacks Tours for Hollow Magic by Mars Lauderbaugh, and I’ll be sharing my thoughts on this new debut graphic novel.

Thanks to Feiwel & Friends for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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TL;DR: Overall, I thought Hollow Magic was a good debut graphic novel with a beautiful art style that helped bring the story to life. I would be curious to see what the author comes out with next! Check this out if you’re looking for a light(ish), easy-to-breeze-through, low-angst graphic novel featuring magic, witches, fey, and found family.

Let’s kick off by talking about the art. It was gorgeous! I really love this art style of graphic novels and I particularly enjoyed the character work from outfits to expressions. I wouldn’t say that the colours are muted, but they aren’t vibrant either, and the combination creates this darker atmosphere that definitely fits the mysterious vibe of the story. I especially enjoyed how vibrant the scenes with magic were—the strands glow brilliantly and seem to jump right off the page!

I also really appreciated how the author took us through their journey developing this graphic novel at the very end. They share how the story’s concept evolved over the years, but also how the character arcs and art evolved as well. It was a nice insight into their process and progress!

As for the story, I enjoyed it and think this is a good debut. Part of me wishes that it had either been a longer standalone graphic novel or maybe was broken down into two+ volumes, because I think the story and character arcs deserved to be fleshed out even more. Like I said, I enjoyed what we got and while maybe not entirely new conceptually, it’s still an enjoyable read for those who like reading about fey and witches. The world-building and magic system were easy to understand. I liked the fey lore that was developed for this story and how witches were added to the mix. Rosefinch, Thierry, and Morgan felt like teenage characters with their quick-to-react emotions, but they were also easy to root for. There are a couple of twists and revelations towards the end that I surprisingly guessed early on, but I still thought they were entertaining and added a nice bit of drama to the story (although really not that dramatic so it’s low-angst, lol).

I think the only aspect that I wasn’t sold on was the romance and that’s because I felt like a lot happens in a relatively short story, and the connection between our characters didn’t have enough time to believably develop within that period. Unless, of course, you enjoy instalove, then I guess you won’t mind it! I also wished the ending had gotten a bit more time because it felt very rushed, and while happy, I kind of wanted to know more about the consequences of what happened. Maybe a sequel or something? 👀

Is Hollow Magic on your TBR or does it sound like something you’d enjoy reading?

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