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.

[13] 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.

[15] 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.

[16] 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".

[17] 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.