Little Lucy Snow was meant to be enjoying her first day at the nice elementary school in town; however, a macabre twist of fate sees her enrolled instead at Miss Weaver's Academy for the Scientifically Gifted and Ethically Unfettered - also known as Hollow Fields. Located on the outskirts of Nullsville and run by the insidious Engineers, the grim boarding school dedicates itself to raising the next generation of mad scientists and evil geniuses. After enrolling in the school by mistake, she realizes how dangerous it was for her to register. At the end of every week, the student with the lowest grades gets sent to 'detention'. Once they are taken away, nobody ever sees the student again. Lucy must find a way to escape the school and escape detention.
Madeleine Rosca wanted to write a story which could appeal to both children and adults and that featured "a female protagonist" and "a steampunk-influenced setting". The concept of the series "gradually evolved over several months". Children's books such as A Series of Unfortunate Events and Artemis Fowl, that combined "fantasy/horror themes with comedy and had a broad appeal" inspired Hollow Fields, though she noted some "manga and comic influences" in her overall work. Rosca enjoyed drawing Lucy and her "big range of expressions" as well as Miss Notch and her "prim mannerisms". She began the series in 2004 and by mid-2005, "had a cohesive version". She published Hollow Fields on the "online webmanga community" Wirepop in November 2005 and three days later, Seven Seas Entertainment offered to publish Hollow Fields in North America. Seven Seas Entertainment released the three volumes of Hollow Fields from July 2007 to January 2009, and reprinted the series in an omnibus collection on October 2009.
Volume list
Reception
Hollow Fields was well received by critics. Ben Leary of Mania Entertainment called it "a good, clean, fun, and inventive read" with "cleanly organized" and "attractive" art. PopCultureShock's Katherine Dacey praised the art as "crisply appealing", which is "as good if not better than the artwork in many licensed series, employing the visual tropes of shonen manga to tell a story that would resonate equally with Frances Hodgson Burnett and Hayao Miyazaki fans"; however, Dacey also commented on the plot as "a bit derivative, borrowing elements from Lemony Snickett and Harry Potter not to mention Castle in the Sky and Steamboy" and wished for "a consistent tone" in the story. Holly Ellingwood of Active Anime described it as "a remarkable debut" and "a rich fantasy of fertile imagination that will appeal to fans of Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events". Ellingwood also commended the "immersing style with a highly attractive quality" of the artwork. Aint It Cool News's Scott Green wrote "Hollow Fields serves as a welcome, boisterous counter-point to post-Potter magical school fiction" and noted that it "does not closely conform to prominent the features of manga, or for that matter, western comics." About.com's Deb Aoki picked Hollow Fields as "2007's Best New OEL Manga", and Dacey listed it as an honourable mention in her list of the ten best global manga. Rosca was one of four winners presented with Japan’s first ever "International Manga Award" for her work on Hollow Fields.
