Hollow City (novel)

Plot

After fleeing in a boat from the hollowgasts, the peculiar children are caught up in a bad storm and need to find land. They land on a beach only to find that the wights are trying to track them down, so they flee into the forests of the mainland. With nowhere to run, the group wander aimlessly, until they find a statue from The Tales of the Peculiar. There, they discover a time loop with the help of their book The Tales of the Peculiar and escape into it. Surprisingly, it is full of peculiar animals, who embrace and thank them for killing a hollow which had longed roamed in the time loop. After learning that Miss Wren, the ymbryne of this unique menagerie time loop, had flown to London to rescue her other fellow ymbrynes, the peculiar children leave in search of her, in hopes that she can turn Miss Peregrine back into a human, before her human self is lost forever. They travel with Gypsies whose leader has a peculiar son.

While trying to board a train, they are ambushed by wights and held in a small shed at gunpoint until Hugh, who had managed to evade capture, used the bees in his stomach to save his friends. The group then continue on their journey and intercept the train to board, and find Miss Peregrine, whom they had accidentally left on the train in Bronwyn's trunk previously.

In the city, they see horrible things left by bombings as they search for Miss Wren's flock peculiar pigeons, which the group believes can lead them to her. They manage to make it to Saint Paul's Cathedral thanks to the book, where they enter an underground crypt and find two peculiar children named Joel and Peter who are echolocators and seem to share one mind. The brothers lead them to where the pigeons normally stay and only Emma, Jacob, and Horace enter following the flutter of pigeons wings up to the attic where they meet an aggressive girl named Melina Manon who is a peculiar teenager gifted with telekinesis. Initially, Melina distrusts them but after Horace proves his peculiarity, begs to travel with them, bringing a peculiar pigeon that they believe will lead them to Miss Wren. They finally reach a time loop under the pigeon's guidance that leads them to Miss Wren, who is hiding in a building coated in thick ice to prevent wights from entering. She proceeds to help Miss Peregrine retain her human form once again, which she estimates will take the whole night. Meanwhile, Jacob, Millard and Emma deduce that the wights are extracting peculiar souls and feeding them to hollowgasts, allowing them to attain the ability to pass through time loops.

Miss Wren is finally able to allow Miss Peregrine to change back into human form, but everyone is shocked to find out that the falcon is not Miss Peregrine at all, but her brother Caul, a wight. He reveals that it was himself and not Miss Peregrine that the children rescued from the submarine and that he has been following them to gain access to Miss Wren's menagerie and find Miss Wren herself, the only ymbryne that had managed to evade capture. Contacting the other wights, they proceed to kidnap every peculiar person in the building. While being marched away, Jacob manages to buy Emma time for her to melt their cuffs and escape into a phone booth in the present, where Jacob uses his cell phone to call his father to reassure him that he is alive, and discovering he has yet another hidden talent apart from seeing hollowgasts – the ability to speak to and control them as well.

Sequel

The third installment in the Miss Peregrine's series, titled Library of Souls, was released on September 22, 2015.