Review: Dream Runners

Title: Dream Runners

Author: Shveta Thakrar

Genre: Portal Fantasy (YA)

Trigger Warnings: Memory loss, violence, blood (mentions), death, parent death (mentions), grief, panic attacks, confinement, forced marriage

Back Cover:

Seven years ago, Tanvi was spirited away to the subterranean realm of Nagalok, where she joined the ranks of the dream runners: human children freed of all memory and emotion, charged with harvesting mortal dreams for the consumption of the naga court.

Venkat knows a different side of Nagalok. As apprentice to the influential Lord Nayan, he shapes the dream runners’ wares into the kingdom’s most tantalizing commodity. And Nayan has larger plans for these mortal dreams: with a dreamsmith of Venkat’s talent, he believes he can use them to end a war between nagas and their ancient foe, the garudas.

But when one of Tanvi’s dream harvests goes awry, she begins to remember her life on Earth. Panicked and confused, she turns to the one mortal in Nagalok who can help: Venkat. And as they search for answers, a terrifying truth begins to take shape—one that could turn the nagas’ realm of dreams into a land of waking nightmare.

Review:

I didn’t have high expectations when picking this one up. It gave me “mediocre YA romance” vibes, and I can’t really explain why. But I am a sucker for books featuring mythologies I’m not super familiar with, and for as interesting as Indian mythology is, I don’t know a whole lot about it. So I decided to give it a chance.

In many ways, this book does fall a little flat. The narrative assumes a base knowledge of Indian terms and phrases that I just don’t have, so I was frequently nudged out of immersion by an unfamiliar term and have to either Google or guess at the meaning. The descriptions were largely limited to color and shape, and occasionally size and shininess, making a visually rich world that lacked the multisensory richness that would have made it feel truly engaging. Aside from Tanvi and Venkat, the characters were well-rounded but largely uninteresting. And I guessed the big devastating twist really early.

But most of these things I only really noticed in retrospect. I read through Dream Runners fairly quickly and stayed engaged the whole time. And that’s because there is one thing this book does spectacularly well: emotions. Tanvi and Venkat alternate narration and both had different but vivid emotions they were going through. Tanvi especially, as she went through confusing, painful emotional process of emerging from the dream runner mental state and regaining her memories, had such vivid, realistic, engaging feelings that they covered over a multitude of confusing terminology and lifeless descriptions. The sheer emotionality of this story hit the perfect balance – it was sharp and intense without tipping over into corny and melodramatic. Regardless of the other flaws in this book, the emotional aspect is spot-on.

There was also an interesting theme of sisterhood and conflict running throughout the book. A large part of Tanvi’s journey as she gets her memory back is her sister – memories of her, her sister as she is now, seven years later, and the ongoing conflict between them. For most of the book, the naga and garuda conflict felt like an irritating distraction from what actually should be an emotional, personal story. But when it comes to a head in the climax, it actually ties into the theme of conflict between sisters.

I also have to briefly mention the romance (because it’s a YA book featuring one female and one male protagonist, there can’t not be a romance). I kept picturing Venkat as significantly older than Tanvi, so it felt a little weird for that. But the romance part was short, sweet, and very, very minor, which I appreciated. It added to the ending, but neither character spent too much time dwelling on it while they were supposed to be doing other stuff, which I think is generally the right way to do romances.

Ultimately, the book as a whole seemed a little flat. It was good, but not great; entertaining, but not engrossing. The world was solid and had good potential, but seemed to be missing a fundamental richness that would make it feel full and vibrant. But the plot on the whole was good, if a little predictable, and the emotions were spectacularly done. It’s certainly not the best book I’ve ever read, but it’s perfectly good.

Review Shorts: Wayward Children Stories

I am a big fan of the Wayward Children series. My only problem is that the series is still ongoing, so I have to wait for the next book to be published before I can read more. So imagine my delight to discover that not only are there three Wayward Children short stories, they’re all available to read for free on Tor.com! Here’s some mini-reviews of the three of them – plus links to where you can read them for yourself.

In Mercy, Rain (Wayward Children #2.5) by Seanan McGuire

See it on The StoryGraph here

Read it on Tor.com here

Jack seems to get an inordinate amount of time in the Wayward Children series, but I really don’t mind because she and her world of the Moors are great. This story is very short and incredibly atmospheric, and really reminds me of the early books in the series (which, since it’s meant to be set just after book two, makes perfect sense). It feels like a single scene of how Jack met her girlfriend Alexis that Seanan just couldn’t make fit in Down Among the Sticks and Bones but that she liked and thought was important, so she added some context and rich descriptions to the beginning and called it a short story. And personally, I think it worked very well. The Moors are fascinating anyway, and this reveals some details (or just reminded me of details that I forgot) and provides some more characterization for Jack’s mad-scientist mentor. It’s a fast, dark, and wonderful read and I enjoyed it very much.

Trigger Warnings: Death, child death, mental illness, body horror, romantic partner death (mentions), emotional neglect

Juice Like Wounds (Wayward Children #4.5) by Seanan McGuire

See it on The StoryGraph here

Read it on Tor.com here

In my review of In an Absent Dream, I complained that the book was too short because one of Lundy’s friends straight-up died and you only find that out in dialogue after the fact. I guess Seanan McGuire heard my complaints, because this is the story of the great quest that lead to that death. As anticipated, it was wrenchingly sad, although I think it would have had even more impact if I’d read it directly after In an Absent Dream. It was also very lyrical and heavy on the feelings of being a child – specifically the invincibility and belief that nothing truly bad is going to happen to you – but significantly less atmospheric than I expected. Which is a disappointment, because I love the goblin market that Lundy goes to and I wanted to spend more time there. But this is a short story, not a full book, and for what it is it really works. Fantastical and heartwrenching, as every Wayward Children story tends to be.

Trigger Warnings: Injury, death, child death, blood, body horror (mild)

Skeleton Song (A Wayward Children Story) by Seanan McGuire

See it on The StoryGraph here

Read it on Tor.com here

Christopher has been in several of the Wayward Children books so far, mainly the ones set at Eleanor West’s actual school, but he’s never been a major character. I mentioned in my review of Come Tumbling Down that I wouldn’t mind if he got his own book. But he got his own short story and honestly that’s good enough. His adventure in Mariposa, the world of music and dancing skeletons, is very straightforward and follows the pattern of the other stories set in the magical worlds – though it was light on how and why he came through the door in the first place and focused more on what he found there and how he fell back out. Every wayward child’s world is a place that connects to their struggle in our world, but Christopher having an illness heavily implied to be terminal and walking through a door into a world where death is not only not to be feared, but is a beginning of something better beyond the bounds of flesh, is the most obvious one so far. This is like a shortened and condensed version of a full Wayward Children book and I think it could have easily been made longer, but it also works as a short story. And if you’re missing your Wayward Children fix, it’s definitely worth reading.

Trigger Warnings: Death, body horror (mild), terminal illness (mentions)

The Wayward Children series:

1. Every Heart a Doorway
2. Down Among the Sticks and Bones
3. Beneath the Sugar Sky
4. In an Absent Dream
5. Come Tumbling Down
6. Across the Green Grass Fields
7. Where the Drowned Girls Go
8. Lost in the Moment and Found

Review: Lost in the Moment and Found

Title: Lost in the Moment and Found

Series: Wayward Children #8

Author: Seanan McGuire

Genre: Portal Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Parent death, gaslighting, threatened child abuse, threatened child sexual abuse, pregnancy (mentions)

Spoiler Warning: This book is eighth in a series, but it is essentially a stand-alone adventure and neither the book nor this review contain spoilers of previous books.

Back Cover:

Welcome to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go.

If you ever lost a sock, you’ll find it here. If you ever wondered about favorite toy from childhood… it’s probably sitting on a shelf in the back. And the headphones that you swore that this time you’d keep safe? You guessed it….

Antoinette has lost her father. Metaphorically. He’s not in the shop, and she’ll never see him again. But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she finds that however many doors open for her, leaving the Shop for good might not be as simple as it sounds.

And stepping through those doors exacts a price.

Lost in the Moment and Found tells us that childhood and innocence, once lost, can never be found.

Review:

The Wayward Children books are fundamentally not happy stories – despite the magic and often whimsy of the magical adventures, the stories are underscored by trauma. As the series goes on, it seems to lean even further into those underlying traumatic aspects. Where the Drowned Girls Go explored the trauma of getting spit back into a world where there is no place left for them, and Lost in the Moment and Found explores the other traumas – the things that made them go through the doors in the first place and the things that happen to them on the other side.

One of the most remarkable things about previous books in the series was how remarkably relatable they were. Lost in the Moment and Found was not to that level of extreme relatability. I think some of that might be me, though, as most of Antsy’s experiences in this book are just not ones I share. If you have experienced similar things, she’ll probably be more relatable. I did feel like Seanan McGuire nailed the experience of being a child as usual, but I didn’t find it quite as immersive this time around.

Unlike earlier books in the series, this book spends much more time on the trauma than on the cool magical worlds. (And as fun as I think it would be to explore the Shop Where the Lost Things Go, it’s not nearly as fun to read about.) It’s sad, poignant, and heartbreaking, and about the literal and metaphorical loss of childhood to trauma as well as brief meditations on the nature of loss and being lost in the first place. There also are some interesting details about how and why the doors actually work, which was quite interesting.

I should have suspected that this is the direction the series would end up heading after Where the Drowned Girls Go, but I guess I still think of the series as mostly dark whimsy like the earlier books. Lost in the Moment and Found isn’t bad at all. It’s just significantly more intense and down to earth than I was expecting. It’s dark and sad and definitely not my favorite Wayward Children book just for lack of that intense relatability that many of the others have, but it was absolutely good and wroth reading regardless.

The Wayward Children series:

Wayward Children short stores

1. Every Heart a Doorway
2. Down Among the Sticks and Bones
3. Beneath the Sugar Sky
4. In an Absent Dream
5. Come Tumbling Down
6. Across the Green Grass Fields
7. Where the Drowned Girls Go
8. Lost in the Moment and Found

Review: The Drawing of the Three

Title: The Drawing of the Three

Series: The Dark Tower #2

Author: Stephen King

Genre: Who knows at this point. Low fantasy portal sci-fi Western with horror elements?

Trigger Warnings: Drug use, drug abuse, needles, addiction, blood, death, injury (graphic), medical content (brief), racism, excrement, gun violence, racial slurs, sexual content, sexual content involving minors, murder, rape (mentions), mind control, someone inside your mind without your consent

Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series, and both this book and this review contain spoilers of book one.

Back Cover:

While pursuing his quest for the Dark Tower through a world that is a nightmarishly distorted mirror image of our own, Roland, the last gunslinger, encounters three mysterious doorways on the beach. Each one enters into the life of a different person living in contemporary New York.

Here he links forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean and the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, in a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies.

Once again, Stephen King has masterfully interwoven dark, evocative fantasy and icy realism.

Review:

This was a weird reading experience. I’m reading this series more to talk about it with a friend than because I want to read it, and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have continued after The Gunslinger. This book does get more into the action, so it felt less like an extended beginning and more like an actual story. At some points it was even enjoyable.

Roland spends this book going back and forth through doors that are only half there to collect the three people the man in black told him he needed. These three people are in our world in different times. There’s Eddie, a drug addict who’s on his first smuggling run when Roland meets him and who quickly became my favorite. There’s Odetta, a black amputee and two different varieties of racist stereotype. And there’s Jack Mort, whose section was fairly enjoyable even though I spent the entire time hoping that he would not have to end up joining the group.

That’s pretty much the plot. There’s an overarching plot of Roland has an infected injury and is trying to stay alive and the three shorter plots of what’s through the doors and trying to get the three people to join him, tied together by sections of walking down a disturbing beach. It is slow-paced, but it’s interesting enough, and compared to book one it’s absolutely action-packed.

It was true of book one, and only got more extreme in this book, but The Drawing of the Three falls into one of my biggest complaints with adult fantasy-adjacent books: relying on grossness and bodily fluids to portray “realism.” There’s a lot of urine, feces, sweat, pus, saliva, and all other kinds of disgusting liquid-ish things that the human body can produce. I know that it is realistic, but personally I read for fun and prefer all the gross stuff to be sanitized by the lens of fiction. I’m aware this is a personal opinion, but if bodily fluids make you squeamish you may want to skip this one.

I was also pretty weirded out by the preteen girl masturbation scene and the guy who orgasmed by murdering people, but it’s not like Stephen King has never written creepy sexual scenes before, so I guess that’s a risk you take when reading his books.

When I finished this book, I was really ambivalent about reading on. Even though this series isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever read, it’s a little too slow and gross for me. This series was starting to feel more like an obligation than anything I particularly want to read. But my friend who’s also reading the series gave me a spoiler for future books that makes me more interested in reading on. So I guess I am continuing the series after all.

The Dark Tower series:

1. The Gunslinger
2. The Drawing of the Three
3. The Waste Lands
4. Wizard and Glass
5. Wolves of the Calla
6. Song of Susannah
7. The Dark Tower

Review: Where the Drowned Girls Go

Title: Where the Drowned Girls Go

Series: Wayward Children #7

Author: Seanan McGuire

Genre: Portal Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Body horror (mild), trauma, anxiety attacks, child abuse, injury details (brief), blood (brief), fatphobia, body shaming, bullying, suicide attempt, forced institutionalization, eating disorder (mentions)

Spoiler Warning: This book is seventh in a series, and both it and this review contain spoilers of previous books.

Back Cover:

“Welcome to the Whitethorn Institute. The first step is always admitting you need help, and you’ve already taken that step by requesting a transfer into our company.”

There is another school for children who fall through doors and fall back out again. It isn’t as friendly as Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

And it isn’t as safe.

When Eleanor West decided to open her school, her sanctuary, her “Home for Wayward Children,” she knew from the beginning that there would be children she couldn’t save; when Cora decides she needs a different direction, a different fate, a different prophecy, Miss West reluctantly agrees to transfer her to the other school, where things are run very differently by Whitethorn, the Headmaster.

She will soon discover that not all doors are welcoming…

Review:

This book is Cora’s book. Cora was in Beneath the Sugar Sky and Come Tumbling Down, but she hasn’t had her own story yet. This one is hers.

But it’s quite a bit different from the previous books. It’s not about her adventures on the other side of her door and how she was spit back out into our world against her wishes, or about her adventures at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, but rather her attempts to escape from the trauma that those things gave her. It also introduces the Whitethorn Institute, which is an alternate school to Eleanor West’s, and it’s not nearly as nice.

It turns out, though, than many of the worlds the door lead to are not as nice as the ones our previous protagonists have gone to (if places like the Moors can even be called “nice” – though some mentioned here are worse). The theme of trauma after the magical adventure runs throughout all the Wayward Children books, but it’s especially strong here. No doors are passed through in this book besides the ordinary type, and Cora has to reckon with what happened the last time she went through one.

I found Cora mildly dislikeable in Come Tumbling Down, but she was very relatable and lovable in this one. I absolutely relate to her frustrations with being fat and other people’s insistence that she chose to be that way and therefore she is lazy/disgusting/morally reprehensible, developing an eating disorder over it and still not losing enough weight to be considered “not fat,” and her attempting to hunch down and be smaller because she feels like she takes up too much space. It’s only mentioned as backstory in a couple spots, but it was so completely relatable. Her attempts to escape from the symptoms of her trauma even if people around her think her solution will also be bad for her was also relatable. Basically if you’re fat and/or traumatized, you’ll probably relate to her.

The Whitethorn Institute was also interesting, and the complete opposite of Eleanor West’s school. There were interesting characters there (including Regan from Across the Green Grass Fields), several twists about what’s actually going on here, trying to fix traumatized kids by traumatizing them in different ways, and a fascinating look at the more cruel, uncaring side of the doorways and the people that come back through them. It was very dark, it was full of trauma, but it was fascinating.

The Wayward Children books are always so good. I can’t say this one is perfect, mainly because I think Cora’s trauma was managed a little too fast to be believable, but it’s an enjoyable story in a fascinating world (or rather, a world populated with people who have been to and returned from fascinating worlds). Since this book just came out, I have no idea when they next one will be released or who it will be about (if you’re reading this, Seanan, Kade needs his own book!), but I absolutely want to read it when it is.

The Wayward Children series:

Wayward Children short stores

1. Every Heart a Doorway
2. Down Among the Sticks and Bones
3. Beneath the Sugar Sky
4. In an Absent Dream
5. Come Tumbling Down
6. Across the Green Grass Fields
7. Where the Drowned Girls Go
8. Lost in the Moment and Found

Review: Across the Green Grass Fields

Title: Across the Green Grass Fields

Series: Wayward Children #6

Author: Seanan McGuire

Genre: Portal Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Bullying, toxic friendships, death of animals, mild gore, blood, kidnapping, racism but in an allegorical way

Spoiler Warning: Even though this book is sixth in a series, it contains no spoilers of the previous books, and this review contains no spoilers either.

Back Cover:

“Welcome to the Hooflands. We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”

Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.

When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to “Be Sure” before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines―a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.

But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem…

Review:

I want to know what witch, demon, deity, or other supernatural being Seanan McGuire sold her soul to in order to make her writing this relatable, but I swear each Wayward Children book is more relatable than the last. This one is a standalone, with the same concept of children falling through doors to other worlds but none of the reoccurring characters from the previous books, but I enjoyed it just as it was.

If you’re familiar with the idea behind Wayward Children, every kid has some reason that they “need” to go through a door. Regan is having trouble with feeling like she doesn’t fit in and a friend group that’s not exactly healthy. When she reveals to the girl she thought was her best friend that the reason she hasn’t been going through puberty is that she’s intersex, the resulting fallout brings her to a door in the woods. She ends up in the Hooflands, magical world of centaurs and unicorns and kelpies and fauns and all manner of hooved fantasy creatures, a wonderful place for a horse-obsessed ten-year-old girl to be. There, she finds what she needs – people who love her not in spite of her differences, but because of them, a place where she doesn’t have to worry about being a certain way in order to fit in and be loved.

I say this about every Wayward Children protagonist, but Regan was incredibly relatable. I didn’t go to a school, but I went to homeschool group where I had a friend who, like Regan’s “best friend,” I let isolate me from other people I could have been friends with so I could stay friends with her. I always felt like I wasn’t normal, like I didn’t fit, like people needed me to be something else or someone else in order to like me. I completely related to Regan’s feeling of being alone and lonely despite having peple around her who ostensibly loved her. And I loved horses as a kid, too – perhaps if I’d gone through a magical door, I would also have ended up in the Hooflands.

Also, this book has some great insights. It wrestles with the question of “how do we determine who are people and who aren’t?” throughout the story, and the representation of the way adults and children relate to each other was spot-on and incredibly insightful. Seanan McGuire captures the child’s perspective on things so well, it’s stunning.

One thing that you have to remember about Wayward Children books is that, fundamentally, these are not happy stories. These magic worlds give the children what they need, but then they spit the children back out into our world and expect them live in normalcy after experiencing magic. These are books about what happens after you have your adventure and return home to find you no longer fit into the place you left and there’s not a spot for you now. This book ripped my heart out. It was so, so good. I adore this series.

The Wayward Children series:

Wayward Children short stores

1. Every Heart a Doorway
2. Down Among the Sticks and Bones
3. Beneath the Sugar Sky
4. In an Absent Dream
5. Come Tumbling Down
6. Across the Green Grass Fields
7. Where the Drowned Girls Go
8. Lost in the Moment and Found

Review: An Accident of Stars (DNF)

Title: An Accident of Stars

Series: Manifold Worlds #1

Author: Foz Meadows

Genre: Portal Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Bullying, sexual harassment, “boys will be boys” justification

Read To: 8%

Back Cover:

When Saffron Coulter stumbles through a hole in reality, she finds herself trapped in Kena, a magical realm on the brink of civil war.

There, her fate becomes intertwined with that of three very different women: Zech, the fast-thinking acolyte of a cunning, powerful exile; Viya, the spoiled, runaway consort of the empire-building ruler, Vex Leoden; and Gwen, an Earth-born worldwalker whose greatest regret is putting Leoden on the throne. But Leoden has allies, too, chief among them the Vex’Mara Kadeja, a dangerous ex-priestess who shares his dreams of conquest.

Pursued by Leoden and aided by the Shavaktiin, a secretive order of storytellers and mystics, the rebels flee to Veksh, a neighboring matriarchy ruled by the fearsome Council of Queens. Saffron is out of her world and out of her depth, but the further she travels, the more she finds herself bound to her friends with ties of blood and magic.

Can one girl – an accidental worldwalker – really be the key to saving Kena? Or will she just die trying?

Review:

I’m struggling to put my finger on why I wasn’t enjoying this book. It wasn’t bad. I stopped reading just as it was “getting good” and Saffron made it into the magical world. It just wasn’t gripping me, and I put it down for nearly a month (per my ereader app the last day I opened it was January 19) without feeling any desire to go back.

Which doesn’t make a lot of sense, because on the surfact there are a lot of things I should like. “Character from our world falls into a differerent, more magical one” is almost always a premise I enjoy. Gwen, the “mentor” character who knows how the magical world works, helped put the current leader on the throne and very much regrets it, which is a unique twist. There’s also some casual polyamory with an asexual character who has both a wife and a husband. These are all things that I theoretically should enjoy.

However. A large part of Gwen’s parts are how much she regrets putting Vex Leoden in charge, but it’s not really clear why. Vex doesn’t do anything (although some of his soldiers are trying to catch Gwen, but that’s kinda understandable if she’s trying to take him down), and none of the characters even talk about what he has done. You’re just supposed to accept that he’s bad.

Also, the only reason that Saffron ends up in the magical world in the first place is because she’s suffering sexual harassment and bullying at school and Gwen is literally the only adult who agrees that’s a bad thing and not just “boys will be boys,” and she’s so struck that there’s an adult who takes her seriously that she jumps through a portal after Gwen just so she can talk to her again. I’m not sure how accurate that is to the public school experience, but it was rather upsetting and also seemed like a pretty weak motivation to jump through a whole portal going who-knows-where.

I think overall this book was just missing a “why.” Why Gwen regrets putting Vex Leoden in charge, why Saffron did … anything (I got no connection to her as a character), why I should be invested in this story. It’s very possible that it gets better and I just stopped too soon, but I feel no connection to the story or the characters and no desire to keep reading.

The Manifold Worlds series:

1. An Accident of Stars
2. A Tyranny of Queens

Review: Come Tumbling Down

Title: Come Tumbling Down

Series: Wayward Children #5

Author: Seanan McGuire

Genre: Portal Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Blood, death, gore, vomit, drowning (mention), falling, being stuck by lightning

Spoiler Warning: This book is fifth in a series and this review does contain spoilers of previous books.

Back Cover:

When Jack left Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children she was carrying the body of her deliciously deranged sister–whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice–back to their home on the Moors.

But death in their adopted world isn’t always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack is herself carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her. Something terrible. Something of which only the maddest of scientists could conceive. Something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome.

Eleanor West’s “No Quests” rule is about to be broken.

Again.

Review:

This is the third book to have Jack and Jill as characters and the second one to take us to the Moors, the world Jack and Jill ended up in. This time, Jack comes back to Eleanor West’s school to ask for help after Jill steals her body and threatens to destroy the entire world of the Moors.

All the characters here are ones we’ve seen before – Kade and Christopher, who were part of the orignal group from Every Heart a Doorway; Cora, who we met in Beneath the Sugar Sky; Jack, obviously; and Alexis, Jack’s girlfriend, who we met in Down Among the Sticks and Bones. As this book is super short, there’s not a lot of character development, but here’s some brief thoughts:

• Kade: A good character, and I wish he got more page time. Definitely deserves his own book.
• Christopher: Also good. I like him a lot and would not object if he got his own book, too.
• Cora: Surprisingly unlikeable in this book. Played off as weak, and came across as very hostile when meeting Jack and Alexis, which made me like her less since I really like Jack.
• Jack: A great character. One of the best in the series, I think. A mad scientist with OCD but so in love with Alexis, even if her way of showing affection is different from “normal.”
• Alexis: A minor character, but a good fit for Jack in the romance department. No strong feelings about her.

For the plot on the back cover being “help Jack fix what went wrong in the Moors,” that takes a surprisingly short time. A full 50% of the book is actually at the school, where Jack explains exactly what happens. Once they get to the Moors, there’s some mad science and emotions and gathering allies, and only the last scene really involves actually setting it right. I didn’t actually mind that much, though, because there were actually some good emotional moments and I also got to see some different areas of the Moors, which was cool.

This book is several degrees darker and bloodier than the previous installments. Even the mood is a lot darker, a lot of it because of how close Jack is to losing her grip on sanity. But it was still really good. I’ve heard rumors that there will be more books in this series, and I hope so! There’s so many more of Eleanor West’s students that deserve their own stories. (*cough*Kade*cough*)

The Wayward Children series:

Wayward Children short stores

1. Every Heart a Doorway
2. Down Among the Sticks and Bones
3. Beneath the Sugar Sky
4. In an Absent Dream
5. Come Tumbling Down
6. Across the Green Grass Fields
7. Where the Drowned Girls Go
8. Lost in the Moment and Found

Review: In an Absent Dream

Title: In an Absent Dream

Series: Wayward Children #4

Author: Seanan McGuire

Genre: Portal Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death mentions, mild body horror (humans transforming into birds), mention of periods

Spoiler Warning: Even though this book is fourth in a series, this story takes place before the events of the first book and there are no spoilers in this review!

Back Cover:

This fourth entry and prequel tells the story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should.

When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she’s found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well.

Review:

Seanan McGuire wrote this series to be specifically relatable to me, personally, I swear. I know I talked about how Jack and Jill’s childhood in Down Among the Sticks and Bones was relatable, but Lundy – just the character of Lundy herself – is basically me.

Lundy didn’t have any friends because her father was the principal of her school (I didn’t have a lot of friends because my mother was in charge of everything I was involved in). Lundy preferred fiction to reality and always had her nose in a book (so did I). Lundy was a stickler for rules because rules made sense and they made the world safer (same). If Seanan had wanted to put a representation of me before age 18 into a book, she couldn’t have done much better of a job. So naturally I felt very invested in Lundy and her adventures.

The Goblin Market that Lundy gets sent to is a fantastic world. It has strict rules about exchanging “fair value” in every exchange, and if you don’t give fair value in a trade you take on Debt, which is … very bad. It can be a bit confusing at first, especially with the Archivist character mostly info-dumping things onto Lundy, but for the most part you figure it out along with Lundy. It’s an amazing and creative place to explore.

My main problem with the book is that it’s short and it skips over so many things that could have been interesting to read about. For example, on Lundy’s first foray into the Goblin Market, she and her friends do battle with a giant wasp queen and one of her friends dies – but you learn about all of this in dialogue after the fact and don’t get to see any of that adventure. This book skips over entire years full of adventures in a matter of paragraphs and it could have been so much longer.

This was a good book. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and even though I knew roughly how it ended (thanks to having read Every Heart a Doorway), it was still sad. I have no idea who the fifth book is going to be about, but this entire series has been great and I’m excited to continue it.

The Wayward Children series:

Wayward Children short stores

1. Every Heart a Doorway
2. Down Among the Sticks and Bones
3. Beneath the Sugar Sky
4. In an Absent Dream
5. Come Tumbling Down
6. Across the Green Grass Fields
7. Where the Drowned Girls Go
8. Lost in the Moment and Found

Review: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Title: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Series: Wayward Children #3

Author: Seanan McGuire

Genre: Portal Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, skeletons, mild body horror, drowning, blood mention

Spoiler Warning: This book is third in a series, so this review has spoilers of the first book, Every Heart a Doorway. (There are no spoilers of the second book, Down Among the Sticks and Bones). If spoilers matter to you, proceed with caution.

Back Cover:

When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let Reality get in the way of her quest – not when she has an entire world to save! (Much more common than one would suppose.)

If she can’t find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she will never have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn’t have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away. Good thing the student body is well-acquainted with quests…

A tale of friendship, baking, and derring-do.

Review:

This story is set after the events of the first book, Every Heart a Doorway, and it brings back several of the characters from that – namely Christopher and Kade, although Nancy does make a small appearance. The main character is a new one, though: Cora, a fat girl who went to an underwater world and was a mermaid before accidentally ending up back in our world. I say Cora is the main character since she’s the one whose thoughts we get to hear, but really everybody in the adventuring group plays roughly equal parts.

The adventuring group consists of Kade and Christopher, who we met in Every Heart a Doorway; Nadya, who must have been in Every Heart a Doorway but who I’d completely forgotten about; Rini, who we’ve never met, daughter of Sumi, who we have; and Cora, who’s competely new. It’s a short book so there’s not a lot of space for character development, but you still get a fair bit from Cora – mainly her feelings about her fatness from being bullied about it, which was relatable to me as a fat person.

The story leads the group through several worlds, including Nancy’s Underworld (where we briefly get to see her again) and Confection, the world Sumi/Rini came from, which is … wild. It is, after all, a nonsense world. I don’t want to spoil the fun of finding out about it, but I really liked that we actually get the origin story for Confection and how it became the way it is.

The whole plot is the group trying to track down the different pieces of Sumi, who was murdered in the first book, so they can bring her back to life so she can save Confection from a tyrant and also get married and have Rini. I never lost interest in the book, but the stakes never seem really high – the only real consequence of failure is that Rini would disappear. Despite the fact that they are trying to literally put a dead girl back together, this book is a lot more light and fun than the other ones. Less gore, less death, and a lot of baked goods.

I think I liked the previous two books better, but I still thoroughly enjoyed this one and definitely intend to finish the series.

The Wayward Children series:

Wayward Children short stores

1. Every Heart a Doorway
2. Down Among the Sticks and Bones
3. Beneath the Sugar Sky
4. In an Absent Dream
5. Come Tumbling Down
6. Across the Green Grass Fields
7. Where the Drowned Girls Go
8. Lost in the Moment and Found