A stand-alone fantasy tale from Seanan McGuire’s Alex award-winning Wayward Children series, which began in the Alex, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning, World Fantasy Award finalist, Tiptree Honor List Every Heart a DoorwayThis 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 … 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.
The Wayward Children Series
Book 1: Every Heart a Doorway
Book 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Book 3: Beneath the Sugar Sky
Book 4: In an Absent Dream
more
I’m so grateful for friends who will loan you all the books they have of a series and don’t blink an eye when you return one per day after finishing them. Those are good friends to have. This wasn’t my favorite of the Wayward Children series, and that might just be because the Goblin Market isn’t similar to where my door would lead. To be totally honest, I think that’s 100% it. McGuire does this really cool thing with this series where each book has it’s own subgenres that she writes in. In any other contact, there is no way In an Absent Dream and Beneath the Sugar Sky would belong to the same series, only McGuire has set it up so that makes total sense. This particular subgenre wasn’t for me, and I was a bit uninvested in the story for that reason, though I think, objectively, the characters were just as fleshed out and detailed as always. You get a lot of emotion punch in each page of these stories, there’s quick reads but filled with a thousand details and millions of messages between the lines. Will I continue reading this series? You bet. This just wasn’t my favorite book out of it.
Seanan McGuire never disappoints – especially with this latest addition to the Wayward Children series. My heart still aches for the characters in this story. I hope this series never ends.
The 1st book in the Wayward Children series, Every Heart a Doorway set an incredible standard that few other novellas or novels can ever hope to surpass. In all truth, I expect it to remain one of the favorite books I have ever read. The second book in the series, while good, completely lacked that deep emotional connection for me. I have not had the opportunity to read the 3rd. Now we come to this 4th book, bestowed upon me by the publisher via NetGalley. How does it rate?
VERY HIGHLY. While not quite equal to the 1st book (a high bar, certainly), this is an incredible read and one I’m adding onto my brand new shortlist of novellas to nominate for awards next year. Katherine Lundy is a studious, serious young girl with her nose always in a book. When she stumbles upon a doorway at age 8, she soon finds herself at the Goblin Fair of legend, a place of magic, quests, and most importantly, RULES. As a child growing up in the 1960s, Katherine knows all about rules and expectations–wear a skirt, be obedient, get married, have babies. The rules in the Goblin Market, in contrast, are absolutely fair to all comers, regardless of plane of origin or gender. Katherine adventures and makes friends and goes between the Fair and earth again and again, and thinks she’s learned about rules and fair play. She hasn’t learned as much as she thinks she has.
I related very strongly to Katherine. I loved the angle that McGuire chose with the story. The emphasis is not on the action; the quests and fighting all take place off the page. Instead, the focus is on the fairness and unfairness depicted in both worlds. This might sound like it’s boring, but it’s not. McGuire is one of the best writers out there and she could make the telephone book a suspenseful read. That said, the storytelling voice is very thick in the first chapter, so if that opening leave you cold, do press on, because that certain voice does back off as Katherine takes the forefront.