Reading the docs, found this line:
author.books<<0>> // get the first book
Which I would expect to use books[0] instead of books<<0>>
This is the line in the code: https://github.com/grails/gorm-hibernate5/blob/8.0.x/docs/src/docs/asciidoc/domainClasses/sets%2CListsAndMaps.adoc?plain=1#L63