Hollow City

Hollow City, Ransom Riggs
Digging the books in the Peculiar series.  This is the second one (one of my Christmas presents) and it picks up right where the first one left off so that it flows seamlessly from the first book. Since it incorporates time travel and has rules set up for its hidden world theme, my somewhat over-analytical nature usually zeros in on inconsistencies and/or questionable continuity issues in general, but I can't bring myself to be too critical of these books and I think I figured out why.  When I was rereading the first one it struck me this time like something a teacher would assign as a creative writing exercise.  I used to do stuff like this all the time when I was younger just for fun.  I would take a large collection of song titles from a band and work as many as I could into a story; stuff like that.  The first book felt like someone dumped a stack of pictures in front of the author and said, "Okay, now create a story around these."  And it's not far from the truth when you read the interview with him at the end of this book.  Even though the story had a more a focused and definite route in Hollow City and even though he operated by looking for pictures to match what he was writing, he still had to tweak and rework things when he couldn't find the exact kind of picture he was looking for. So in a way the exercise continues and I find it enchanting enough to just led the nit picky details slide. 
Once again, it's not scary (to me) even though I think it's supposed to be. Whatever you expect of it in that regard is entirely dependent on taste and beliefs. The main character is trapped in WWII England with the others and they have to find help for their Headmistress.  She's trapped in her peregrine form and has only about three days before she loses her ability to change back.  So, it's fast paced like the first one even though it's twice the size and introduces more peculiar people, animals, and situations. It's just a lot of fun and I genuinely did not see the twist at the end coming... I don't know if it's because I'm losing my touch, or if it's just because I was enjoying it so much I wasn't trying too hard to guess what would happen.  Probably the latter.  I can't wait to read the third one.