It was 1972 when teenager Jenna's older sister Patty, who had left small town Mill Hollow, Kentucky to chase big city dreams in New York City,
returned home in a wooden box, having ended her own life. Ravaged by grief and guilt, Jenna ran out into the stormy night - and over the edge of
a ravine, leaving a broken body to wash downriver.
But death was not the end of Jenna.
In 2015, Jenna has settled into existence in Manhattan, one of numerous ghosts who dwell in the vast city. Like other ghosts, she barters in time
- time borrowed from mortals and time paid back. Once she has repaid her debt to the cosmos, the difference between when she actually died and
when she was destined to die, she can pass on to whatever comes after this world, a place where Patty must be waiting for her kid sister. Able to
take on corporeal form for a limited time each day, she has a job at a coffee shop and volunteers at a suicide prevention hot line (where every
life saved earns her some credit), and has an apartment where she looks after aging cats: the sort of life Patty might once have aspired to if
her depression hadn't driven her to suicide. Jenna had hoped to go on like this for as long as it takes to balance the spiritual books and earn
her release... until the other ghosts in the city start disappearing. Something seems to be hunting them down - and Jenna, who earned her place
in the afterlife by running away, might not be able to outrun this danger.
Review
Though it feels tangentially connected to other works by McGuire (such as her Ghost Roads trilogy), this novella works well enough as a
standalone, creating a mythos of ghosts and witches, where the afterlife is part of a greater ecosystem of time whose collapse would have terrible
consequences in the mortal world and beyond. Jenna herself barely understands it, for all that she's been a ghost for forty-odd years; this is not
a world of rigidly defined rules and magical systems, but something far more complicated and esoteric and beyond the grasp of humans, where even
experts like witches are often groping in the dark about their own powers and limitations. What rules there are, though, provide some framework
for what the characters can or cannot do in any given situation, enough to keep the plot from being utterly random (and enough to demonstrate the
stakes). Jenna often feels lost and over her head trying to parse it all, especially when the danger strikes very close to home, but she's not the
same scared runaway girl she was when she died. The story takes a while to get itself off the runway, and when it gets to the final act some
elements and at least one character motivation felt a bit underdeveloped. Despite that, it has the sort of atmospheric writing I've come to expect
from McGuire, and evokes some real emotions.
The Phantom Prom Date, the Girl in the Green Silk Gown, the Spirit of Sparrow Hill Road... around every camp fire, in every truck stop and greasy-spoon
diner, people know the tragic story of the sweet young girl from the small town who died before her time, hitchhiking her way across North America. Some
say she leads drivers to their deaths, some say she saves their lives, but none of them know the truth, and if they did they'd never believe it. Some
stories, you have to die to believe.
Rose Marshall was sixteen when she was run off the road by Bobby Cross, a man who bargained for immortality at the cost of harvested souls - but she got
away before he could claim hers, and she's been running from him ever since. Now she's a hitcher, a ghost of the twilight Americas that lie just beneath
the skin of the living world, tethered to existence by unfinished business as she haunts the highways and diners and the hidden ghostroads. It's not the
greatest afterlife, but she's seen enough to know there are fates far worse than death... such as the fate that awaits her should Bobby Cross finally get
hold of her. Only Rose is getting a little tired of running away, and though she may be forever sixteen, she's not the same sweet, innocent small-town
girl she used to be.
Review
Built around ghost stories and urban legends and rooted in travelers' tales as old as the first trade routes, Sparrow Hill Road creates a modern
American roadside mythology, where hitchhikers are as liable to be dead as alive, late-shift diners host spirits, crossroads bargains are not to be made
lightly, and roadways can take on lives of their own. Rose Marshall makes a decent guide, a gutsy girl whose decades of death have hardened her in many ways;
innocence is the first thing to go if one wants to survive the twilight ghostroads. Her adventures are laced with horror and beauty, sadness and humor, with
nostalgia for a lost America alongside darker shadows of history that refuse to stay in the past. Rose collects some interesting allies and enemies on the
road, all bound in some way by peculiar magicks that even long-time spirits or the most learned of routewitches can't fully explain. Rather than feeling
plot-convenient or random, though, they fit the shifting, spectral nature of the twilight America McGuire crafts, which is a feat in and of itself. The rules
are both simple and inexplicable, with no need for triple-appendiced magic systems (which have their places in fantasy, but can also overburden a story.) This
book collects several short stories about Rose, some of which read as standalone adventures but all of which, especially towards the end, build into a greater
arc as her confrontation with Bobby Cross looms ever closer. The conclusion wraps up character growth, even if threads are naturally left dangling for the rest
of the series. I guess now I'll have to order Book 2... dang it.
Rose Marshall died when she was sixteen, killed by the monstrous Bobby Cross on Sparrow Hill Road, but she's far from gone. For sixty years, she has
wandered the ghost roads of North America, the legendary "Phantom Prom Queen" of truck stops and roadside diners. She's gathered her share of allies
among the shades and mages, living and dead and other - but also her share of enemies, none worse than Bobby Cross himself. His crossroad bargain for
immortality demands a steady supply of ghosts to fuel his demonic muscle car, and Rose Marshall still vexes him as the one who got away... but now, he
may have finally cornered the wandering hitcher. Through a series of betrayals, Rose Marshall finds herself separated from the twilight roads and her
friends, and imprisoned once more in a living body, leaving her vulnerable when Bobby Cross comes gunning for her again. Her only way out will involve
trusting a woman who once vowed to destroy her, and a journey from which almost none - living or dead - have returned.
Review
The first Ghost Roads story was a collection of short tales that built to a larger narrative about Rose Marshall and the "truth" behind the urban
legend of the Phantom Prom Queen, the teen girl in the green silk dress forever hitching rides across the country. This book is a single arc, starting
not long after the first book ended and the changes it wrought in Rose's situation. She remains a stubborn, gutsy heroine, seasoned traveler of the
ghost roads, but finds herself wrenched out of her element and poured back into living flesh - a horrifying prison to one who has literally been dead
far longer than she ever was alive, and one that may threaten to separate her forever from her friends and her home in the twilight America should she
die in the wrong way... especially if she dies under the wheels of Bobby Cross's ever-hungry demonic car. Even as she rebels against the limitations of
physical existence, with its revolting natural needs and processes, some small part of her wonders what it might be like to no longer be forever
sixteen, to live a life she never had a chance at, for all the impracticalities and betrayals to loved ones that would entail. She fights against
herself at least as much as against Bobby Cross, who remains a devious and relentless enemy who will stop at nothing, violate any sacred oath or
hallowed ground or honored tradition of the twilight Americas, in pursuit of Rose Marshall... but she is no fainting damsel in need of protection or
rescue, and is as relentless as he is when it comes to saving her friends and getting what she wants. Like the first book, this is a fast paced and
haunting tale of magic and mortality and the unseen phantoms of history that endure beneath the mundane surface of the world. I enjoyed the ride, and
look forward to the third book.
It's been decades since Rose Marshall, the small-town Michigan teen girl from the wrong side of the tracks, was killed by Bobby Cross and his demonic car.
Since then, she's been called many things - the Phantom Prom Queen, the Angel of the Overpass, the Girl in the Green Silk Gown - and done many things -
served as psychopomp guiding new ghosts in the twilight America beneath the daylight world, helped out the odd mortal on the roadway, even traveled to the
underworld for an audience with her patron goddess Persephone. But Bobby Cross has always loomed over her shoulder, the monster she can never escape, who
still hunts her and those she loves, be they living or dead. She hates the man, but could never do anything about him while he had the power of the
otherworldly crossroads at his back.
Now, the crossroads are dead, and all bets are off.
Without the trickster forces behind that unnatural place to back him up, Bobby Cross is growing more desperate, because for the first time since he made his
dark bargain, he's vulnerable. Now, Rose Marshall no longer has to run. She can fight back and end his evil once and for all. But being vulnerable and
desperate might make him more dangerous than he's ever been, and even though she's dead, Rose still has a lot to lose...
Review
The third and (presumed) final tale of urban legend Rose Marshall and her nemesis Bobby Cross wraps the tale up in a suitably climactic fashion. Rose is
not the girl she was when she was alive decades ago, and is not the same ghost she was when the series started, having gained and lost allies along the way.
She's come to realize that it's not just about Bobby Cross's evil bargain to keep immortal life at the expense of the lives and ghosts that feed his demonic
car; it's about other people trying to take control of (or take away) her life (or afterlife), and about those who feel they deserve things out of life or
death when there never were such guarantees, willing to destroy anyone and anything to get what they feel they are "owed". Even Gary, the boy she would never
meet at the dance, who spent his whole life searching for a way to join her in the afterlife only to end up reincarnated as a car upon the ghost roads, has
been making decisions for her without actually talking to or even knowing her; the Rose he knew is the one whose bones are rotting in a Michigan cemetery,
not the Rose she's become after decades as a hitcher ghost and urban legend. At times, the message (and some general meandering, which started feeling a bit
like filler now and again) threatened to overwhelm the story, even as it cuts to the heart of what ultimately drives Rose Marshall to persist as she has in
the afterlife, a determination to exist on her own terms in spite of the demands and limits placed upon her. This installment also seems tied more strongly
with McGuire's related InCryptid urban fantasy series, which I've only read the first installment of. Nevertheless, in spite of sometimes feeling a touch
drawn out, this makes a worthwhile conclusion to the tale of the Phantom Prom Queen, and while the door's clearly cracked open wide enough for future
installments, things feel satisfactory where they are now.
Verity Price came to New York City to pursue a professional dancing career. Unfortunately, Prices have other obligations, namely keeping an eye on the
local cryptid population and ensuring that their interactions with oblivious mundane humans don't get too messy... not to mention keeping her identity
secret in case anyone from the Covenant of St. George, a secret sect that believes God charged them with killing any and all "unnatural" beings (plus a
generations-long grudge against the "traitor" Price clan), comes around. Juggling two lives is tough under the best of circumstances, but lately it's grown
a whole lot tougher. Cryptids are disappearing across the city, just as a Covenant soldier, Dominick De Luca, turns up. When he turns out not to be the
cause, Verity has little choice but to accept his help in seeking the real culprit - a search that points to a monster more dangerous than anything she's
dealt with before. For a girl raised hunting the deadliest beasts out of legend, that's a high bar.
Review
With a tough, snarky heroine, a hot yet shady love interest, and a host of oddball characters ranging from lizard-men and shapeshifters to talking mice
with a fixation on their peculiar invented religion, Discount Armageddon delivers humor and action in more or less equal doses, plus a sizzling
smatter of romance on the side. Verity may have been born to a clan of cryptozoologist monster hunters, but her true passion is ballroom dance... a passion
she has to set aside while her friends in the cryptid community are under siege from an unknown threat. Dominick was raised by the Covenant, and never thought
to question their teachings until he encounters Verity. They make an uneasy partnership at first (natural, considering how Dominick was raised hearing how
her ancestors betrayed their oaths to the order), but tend to pull their own weight and fight their own battles. Things move fairly quickly from the start,
wending through the hidden world of New York City's cryptid society, many of whom are little more dangerous than the average human despite Covenant propaganda.
In keeping with the city's melting pot origins, the cryptids originate from all over the globe, without falling back on urban fantasy staples like zombies and
vampires. They come across less as manifested angels or demons and more as part of a strange yet vital ecosystem, one that humans have (inevitably) mucked up
without noticing or caring about the consequences. The whole makes for an amusing, interesting, and quick (if not entirely unexpected) read, in a series I
might follow through a book or two more.
Roger was a young boy when he first heard the girl's voice in his head, helping him solve his math homework. When Dodger needed help with spelling, he
returned the favor. It seems impossible, or at least highly improbable, but the two share something akin to telepathy, though they live a continent apart
and have never met. But there is more than mere coincidence at work. Though they don't know it, the two are the work of an alchemist who seeks control over
the universe, part of an experiment that stretches back more than a century and has already spilled an ocean of blood. If they ever grow into the powers
they were created to manifest, they may well doom themselves and the world... unless they can take control of their own fates. But how can they hope to do
that when they don't even know who, or what, they truly are?
Review
This is an unusual book. Weaving in ancient alchemy, language, mathematics, strained sibling relationships, the pain and isolation of genius children,
and even the power of children's literature (a beloved in-world book, Over the Woodward Wall, turns out to have been written by an alchemist with
unsavory ulterior motives), McGuire crafts a compelling, often-harrowing story that spans over two decades - and more, if one takes into account the time
travel element. It takes a while to get the feel of the story, and the characters, while always interesting, aren't always likable. Events range from
simple moments of human interaction and quiet beauty to gruesomely detailed pain and terror; there's a trigger warning-worthy plot point involving one
character's attempted suicide and the aftermath. Once things pick up, they move at a fair clip and ratchet up to a very intense finale. I wavered a bit on
whether to clip a half-star for a slightly drawn-out ending, but ultimately came down on the side of a full fifth star. The many disparate elements are
just so expertly slotted together.
On a closing note, McGuire has actually written and published Over the Woodward Wall as a standalone title under "A. Deborah Baker."
October "Toby" Daye was born between two worlds: the mortal realm of her human father in San Francisco, and the Summerlands of her Faerie mother. Such
unions inevitably end in tragedy, and for changelings the tragedy rarely ends, as they're too human to be truly part of the Fae courts and too Fae to ever
be truly human. She tried living a normal mortal life, even finding a husband and having a daughter and working a job as a private investigator (never
mind that her clients tended to be nonhuman), but a curse trapped her as a fish for fourteen years: long enough for everyone, mortal and immortal, to give
up on her... and for her to give up on herself.
Toby's struggling to rebuild a life now that she's free. She claws a living off minimum wage jobs, refusing to return to her old liege; Faerie magic cost
her her family already, and be damned if she falls into their traps again. But when an old associate, the Countess Evening Winterrose, is murdered with
iron, her last message binds Toby with an unbreakable curse: find the killer, or be driven to madness and death. Like it or not, Toby has a case to solve
- one that will drag her into the very heart of the Faerie community of San Francisco, and into magicks unseen since the days of King Oberon.
This special edition includes the original novella Strangers in Court: When a younger Toby discovers she's carrying the child of her mortal lover,
she decides it's time to leave Home, the nest of outcast changeling miscreants where she's been living since fleeing her disinterested Fae mother. But to
make a clean break and start a new life, she needs to perform an act great enough for the Queen to acknowledge her... and do so without being destroyed by
pureblood politics and powers.
Review
Like all urban fantasies, Rosemary and Rue works to blend ancient beings and powers with the modern world. Unlike some, this book doesn't forget
the inherent inhumanity and cruelty of the traditional Faerie races, their general disregard for mortal emotions and lives save as temporary playthings for
their inscrutable games. This attitude bleeds over into the changelings, halfblood Faeries who fit into neither world; October can be just as selfish as
any of the purebloods, which can make her difficult to spend time around as a main character. She spends less time hunting down Evening's killer than
trading snark with various characters and barely avoiding death, until toward the end of the tale. (How often can one woman pass out from pain and blood
loss in a story, anyway?) Her own attitude gets her in at least as much trouble as the case; sometimes I had to wonder why she had so many friends
seemingly devoted to her survival, given that she was about as cuddly as one of the thorn-covered rose goblins. Despite that, though, the tale moves fairly
well, with plenty of action and magic, enough to manage to hold onto a Good rating. I don't expect I'll follow this series, as even by the end I didn't
particularly like Toby, but it's a solid urban fantasy that leaves plenty of threads for future installments.
As for the included novella, it relates the story of how Toby finally had to grow up and start defining her own life instead of letting others define it
for her - in the process making friends and enemies that prove pivotal in the events that unfold in Rosemary and Rue. It probably wouldn't stand
too well on its own, but it comes packaged with this edition, so that's not an issue.
Once upon a time, a child found a doorway to a magical world where they had many adventures and learned many things. Then, one day, they found
themselves returned to the land of their birth. It was a harsh land, a strange land, and it was no longer home, as they were no longer the children
they used to be.
Some went insane. Some swallowed their memories until they convinced themselves it had all been a dream. But some found their way to a special
boarding school, where the headmistress helped them process their adventures and learn to cope with the knowledge that, try as they might, they
probably will never find their way back to the kingdoms of fairies or the moors of vampires. Because the headmistress, Eleanor West, was once a
little girl who found a doorway, herself.
Nancy arrives at Eleanor West's school with hair bleached white from the touch of the Lord of Death and a suitcase packed with offensively colorful
clothes by parents who just want their lost "rainbow" girl back. Rooming with Sumi, whose adventures in a Nonsense realm left an indelible mark on her
personality, she struggles to adapt, even as she refuses to give up hope of returning to the Halls of the Dead. Soon after her arrival, students start
turning up dead - and almost everybody suspects the new girl who was touched by the Lord of Death.
This novella includes sample chapters from Down Among the Sticks and Bones, the next volume in the series.
Review
Every Heart a Doorway, a 2016 Nebula award winner, examines the psychological impact of portal adventures, the one many authors tend to
gloss over or leave out. If you really had been to another world, if you really had been apprenticed to a mad scientist or courted by the Skeleton
Girl or learned to run on rainbows, how could you ever return to our mundane Earth, with its immutable physics and linear time? I suppose this could
be classified as a Teen title, given the age of the main characters, but the subject matter and overall tone bleed over into the adult end of the
spectrum, and it's as much about mourning the loss of childhood as it is about magical worlds. McGuire creates an unexpected cast of decently-rounded
characters, hinting at all manner of worlds from all over the map, a map whose compass includes such cardinal directions as Nonsense and Logic and
Virtuous and Wicked. It's harsh and bleak and beautiful all at once, with hope being both a cruelty and a comfort. I quite enjoyed it, and will likely
read more titles in this series as they appear.
Once upon a time, twin daughters Jacqueline and Jillian were born to a man and woman who perhaps never should have been parents. They created
boxes to place the girls in - Jill designated the tomboy to appease a man who wanted a son, Jack placed in ribbons and lace for a mother who saw
a daughter as a vanity doll - and did not care how much it hurt them to be squeezed into shape... or how it might threaten what little bond there
was between them.
One day, when they were twelve and already growing into the shapes prescribed for them, the twins found a strange staircase in the bottom of a
trunk in the attic. Had they been raised in a family where fairy tales were told and books read, they might have known to be more cautious about
exploring strange passageways - but no fairy tale could've prepared them for the Moors. Here, in a bleak land under a ruby-red moon, where monsters
walk and swim and prey upon the humans who manage to survive (as often as not under the fickle protection of a predator), the girls may finally
learn who they really are, and what it means to choose their own paths. Jack becomes apprentice to a mad scientist, Jill the protégé
to the vampire overlord of the local town, and the passing years see them grow further apart. But they are still twins, of the same blood and bone,
which means their fates will always be bound - if not as friends, then as enemies.
Review
The second book of the Wayward Children series follows the backstory of Jack and Jill, two girls from Eleanor West's boarding school for
children who had been to magical worlds and returned to Earth. Like the first book, an almost lyrical narrative creates the feel of a fable or fairy
tale, if a rather dark one. From before their conception, the twins were destined to lead harsh lives, largely bereft of love and understanding, even
between each other. That twisted upbringing comes to morbid life in the world of the Moors. Without knowing the events in the first book of the series
(Every Heart a Doorway), the ending would be extra-bleak... and even then, it's a bitter story of the harm ultimately wrought by parents who
see their children as mere extensions of their own ambitions, not people who may need guidance, but ultimately have their own lives to live and lessons
to learn. There's a certain bleak, compelling beauty to this story, which can be read as a stand-alone but has extra weight if you've read the first
book in the series.
Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, a boarding school for kids and teens who had been to magical worlds and returned to Earth, is rarely a dull place - how
could it be, with students who had once saved fairy kingdoms or swum with mermaids or conversed with skeletons? Even by their standards, though, Rini's splashdown
in the turtle pond counts as strange. Far stranger is that Rini claims to be the teenaged daughter of Sumi, a girl who had been to the Nonsense realm of Confection
and murdered before she could find her way back to marry and conceive Rini to begin with. With Sumi's untimely death, time in Confection is unraveling, and the
wicked Queen of Cakes - vanquished by Sumi - has risen again. Even as Rini insists on finding her mother, she begins to disappear, a finger at a time. Thus begins a
quest across various worlds, a race against time... but, even in the impossible realms beyond the invisible doors, is it possible to ever cheat Death?
Review
Unlike the previous book in the series (the prequel Down Among the Sticks and Bones), this tale returns the action to Eleanor West's school and the displaced
teens living there. Returning characters join with new cast members in a worlds-spanning journey that tests them all in various ways, perhaps none more than newcomer
Cora. Once a heroine in a mermaid realm, she's been struggling to fit in on dry land again, where her weight has always defined her; her struggles with herself grow all
the more desperate when they wind up in Confection, a realm made of candy and just the kind of place cruel peers would've thought she'd been most at home. Again, what
could've been a shallow and simple story becomes much, much more in the hands of McGuire, with great characters and memorable turns of phrase and beautiful candy for
the mind's eye (literally, in the case of Confection's vistas.) Oh, to make words dance like that upon a page... I am loving this series, and eagerly await the next
installment.
Since she was a little girl, Katherine Lundy had always kept quiet and followed the rules, and didn't even mind that her only friends were books. Then, when
she was eight, her feet - tricky things, feet, prone to following one's heart even when one's head is certain it knows where to go - led her to the tree that
shouldn't have been there, with the door that couldn't exist. Beyond lay the bizarre wonders of the Goblin Market, where people are as apt to have feathers or
horns as hair and where the merchants sell all manner of things imaginable and unimaginable, tangible and ephemeral. Even here, there are rules: ask for nothing,
always give fair value, and remember the curfew. Katherine is good with rules, so she feels right at home - moreso when she makes her first friends,
the orange-eyed girl Moon and the woman known as the Archivist. But the Goblin Market is not a place to travel lightly, and fair value for a girl's desires may
be counted in coin Katherine cannot understand.
Review
Like the other Wayward Children books, this novella spins a story of wounded childhood and worlds found and lost, of bright wonders that hide dark
secrets and bargains with unseen costs. Lundy is not the girl readers met in the previous installments - not yet. First, she must pass through a lonely childhood
and multiple journeys to the Goblin Market, and learn some valuable, if painful, lessons on happiness, friendship, belonging, and fair value for a life. As
before, McGuire almost weaves poetry in her prose, yet without sacrificing clarity or readability for the sake of a turn of phrase. The end result is a tale that
feels both fresh and timeless.
When Jack and Jill Wolcott last left Eleanor West's boarding school, back through a doorway to the haunted world of the Moors, one of them was dead. None
of the students thought they'd return, for they'd gotten the very thing so many of them longed for: a chance to go back to the other world where they'd spent
their childhoods, where they'd been heroes - where they'd actually belonged, unlike cold and unmagical Earth. Then the lightning door appears, and a stranger
carries a limp and traumatized Jill through... only it isn't Jill inside. Jack was betrayed, ripped out of her body and placed in her sister's, as the
vampire Master plots to overthrow his archenemy Dr. Bleak and claim victory over the Moors once and for all. Hanging onto her sanity by a slender, fraying
thread, Jack must ask her former schoolmates for help before the world she loves and calls home is torn apart. But even though they all were once heroes in
their own worlds, the horrors awaiting them in the Moors may be too much to bear, and even heroes can fail.
Review
Another superb entry in McGuire's marvelous Wayward Children series, Come Tumbling Down revisits the twins-turned-enemies Jack and Jill
and the Moors, a Gothic nightmare world of vampires and mad scientists and shadowy things with too many teeth, perpetually lit by a watchful crimson Moon.
Like the previous volume (Beneath the Sugar Sky, which revisited Sumi's treat-based world of Confection), the core cast from Eleanor West's school
once again rallies to help one of their own, each still hoping to rediscover their own doorways to their own happy endings... but Jack's story is a stark
reminder that getting to go home doesn't guarantee a happily-ever-after, and fairness is never a concern of the doorway worlds. Nevertheless, heroism seems
to be a habit that's hard to break, and sometimes that means walking into the jaws of Hell - or a vampire's lair, or the temple of the Drowned Gods - even
knowing it's unlikely one will ever walk out again alive, let alone as the same person who walked in. Once again, McGuire crafts a story that approaches
poetry, full of tragedy and moments of humor and beauty (if a dark beauty), with a satisfactory conclusion that nevertheless leaves fresh scars and bruises
on the characters.
In her youngest years, Regan had two best friends, Laurel and Heather... until the day Heather brought a garter snake to school and Laurel decided
she wasn't "girl" enough to play with, dragging Regan away. She never forgot that moment, the lesson taught in coldness and cruelty: there's a right
way and a wrong way to be a girl, and to be the wrong way is to be cast out. Though she never became obsessed with boys or dating, she did fall in
love with horses, which was acceptably feminine enough to get a pass from the one-girl judge, jury, and executioner Laurel... but, as years pass, her
friends start to change and she does not. Eventually, Regan has to ask why.
That's when her parents tell her the truth: a lot of words about chromosomal abnormalities and androgen insensitivity, about being intersex, about how
she will likely never be entirely a "she" (by traditional, Laurel-dictated standards) without hormone treatment. The next day at school, she makes the
mistake of telling Laurel... and is driven away, pushed out like a monstrous freak.
Running away from school, Regan finds herself before a door in the woods... a door that leads to a land of unicorns and centaurs and all manner of
hoofed wonders and terrors, where humans are near-legendary creatures. It is said in the Hooflands that humans only arrive when there is a great danger
or a great change, and once they've done what they were sent to do, they disappear. Horse-lover Regan soon finds herself more at home among these
gentle giants than she ever was on Earth; if she avoids the Queen, perhaps she can stay here forever among the centaurs. But, hard as she tries to
avoid her apparent destiny, destiny has a way of coming to find her...
Review
After a few iffy reads in a row, I needed a break, and any title by Seanan McGuire is far more likely than not to be good. Across the Green Grass
Fields introduces a new character to her Wayward Children series of portal fantasy adventurers, the intersex girl Regan, and a new world in the
Hooflands, a dream world for any horse-lover - even if the domestic unicorns are dumber than a pile of rocks and smell bad to boot. Like the other
children in the series, Regan struggles to fit into a box the world forces her into, a struggle that leads to failure that leads to a door and another
world. Here, she finds a place where she feels more at home (to the point where she becomes wary of passing through any door, lest it dump her back in
the cold and cruel Earth run by Laurels who tell her she's a freak) - but, ultimately, she is an outsider, an anomaly, and as much as she becomes bonded
with the centaur herd that takes her in, she'll always be a visitor, always have the weight of Destiny hanging over her head. But is Destiny an outside
force, or merely the inevitable result of one's own conscience and choices? It reads fast, with moments of beauty and heartbreak, and if it seems
slightly thinner or weaker than the other Wayward Children installments, it's still leagues ahead of many titles.
Not many children find a doorway to another world, but Cora did, pulled into the aquatic realm of the Trenches to become the mermaid she always was at
heart... until, like so many such children, she found herself back on Earth, where the water can't be breathed by human lungs, where too many just see
her as a fat girl despite her now-turquoise hair. At Eleanor West's special boarding school, she found others like herself, and made friends.
She followed those friends on a quest to other worlds, ever the hero (as all wayward children were, once upon a time)... but, in the monstrous Gothic
realm of the Moors, the dark waters held something far more terrifying than she ever encountered in her own world - and the Drowned Gods claimed her as
their own.
When she got back to Eleanor's school, she tried to ignore the nightmares, tried to ignore the whispering voices that turned her beloved water into
something terrifying, but it's only getting worse, and nothing the aging woman or Cora's school friends have done can help. Cora can think of only one
way out: forget her tail, forget her world, forget everything and just be the normal girl she used to be before she found her first door.
The Whitethorn Institute is Eleanor West's mirror, a regimented place dedicated to expunging the strangeness and the memories from its students and
turning them into ordinary, unremarkable people fit for ordinary, unremarkable lives on this ordinary, unremarkable Earth. Their methods are drastic,
but it's the only hope Cora sees for being rid of the pull of the Drowned Gods. Only what she sees in Whitethorn stirs the latent hero in her, for a
monster walks these halls.
Review
The latest installment moves the main story arc forward, following up on Cora as she struggles to deal with her encounter in the Moors and bringing
Regan (from the previous volume) into the cast as a Whitethorn student who cannot give up her memories of the Hooflands. Cora's decision to transfer
schools is not a simple whim or even necessarily a mistake; she's drowning, quite literally, in trauma, and for all Eleanor's good intentions nothing at
her school seems able to address that. This is a beast Cora must face on her own terms, and seeing how the other school deals with the often-traumatic
experience of being spat back onto Earth after journeying to other worlds helps, if perhaps not in the way the headmaster intended. However much Cora
loves her world of the Trenches, the horrors of the Drowned Gods are worth almost any sacrifice to be rid of... almost. At the institute, there is only
ever one world worth knowing, and one vision of that world that is to be acknowledged as truth, even though every student there knows it to be a blatant
and painful lie (a clear and pointed commentary on the damage wrought by "alternative facts" and a skewed curriculum that erases vast swathes of
experiences). As with other Wayward Children titles, there's more than a touch of pure horror to the story and to the other worlds the students (and
adults) have been to; some children want very much to forget everything about their travels, and for good reasons, for not every world is a welcome one.
The tale moves fairly decently, introducing hints of a greater challenge and arc ahead for the cast, though part of me prefers the "origin" tales.
Her parents called her "Antsy", both because she was too small for her given name of Antoinette and because she could never keep still. For five
years, the little redheaded girl had a perfect, protected childhood with a father and a mother who both loved her very much... until the day in
Target when her daddy fell down and didn't get back up. Then, several months later, her mother has a new friend, a man named Tyler. Mother thinks
Antsy should be nice to Tyler, as well; he will never replace her real father, but he's a good man, Mommy insists. Only he's not a good man, and
Antsy doesn't know quite why - and the night she finally knows why is the night she runs away, far away, to get lost somewhere he can never find
her.
Antsy was only looking for a place to call her grandmother, to take her away from Mommy and the lying, bad Tyler. But the door she opened turned out
to be a Door, a passage to somewhere else. A talking magpie and an old woman tell her she has found the Shop Where Lost Things Go, an impossibly
vast place chock full of all manner of things from all manner of worlds, lost by all manner of people. Here, Antsy finds other Doors, other places
to explore with her new companions and guardians. Any child would be filled with wonder at the sight, and Antsy is no exception. But she should,
perhaps, have paid more attention to fairy tales when she was younger. If she had, she might have known that nothing comes without a price - and she
might have understood what the Shop and the Doors were costing her much sooner...
Review
This is another "origin" entry in McGuire's poetic, haunting portal fantasy series, this one with a dark enough opening that the author includes
a brief warning and a reassurance that, this time, the child runs. Antsy starts as an innocent child, full of life and love and laughter - full of
so much to lose, something she only learns when her father collapses and, one by one, things she'd taken for granted fail her. When Tyler turns up,
she loses even more as he drives a wedge between her and her mother through subtle manipulation and lies... the first ominous sign of what he
intends for the girl should she stay. Running seems to be Antsy's only choice, and by the time she has any second thoughts it's too late to turn
back; the Doors have noticed and claimed her for the Shop, a nexus of innumerable worlds and of particular importance to the Doors themselves. Here,
the magpie Hudson and the old woman Vineta take her in and help her learn the ways of the Shop and the Doors and the wayward items on the shelves...
but there is more to this place than they let her in on, more to the travels between worlds and the Doors that appear every day. The story reads
fast, as Antsy moves from fear to wonder to acceptance to fear (and anger) again once she begins to suspect the truth, and more information about
the Doors that are so integral to the whole series is trickled in. In some ways, though, it feels a bit like ground McGuire previously covered in
Lundy's tale, In an Absent Dream. I'm also a bit wary of the building of a larger arc behind the Doors, the worlds, and Eleanor West's
school; this is the kind of development that could kick the story up to a whole new epic level, or could turn into something too weighty and
convoluted that ends up bringing the thing crashing down. So far, I don't have reason to doubt McGuire, but I'm keeping a careful eye on the
altimeter of my suspension of disbelief all the same. At this point, at least, the Wayward Children series remains interesting and enjoyable.
Once upon a time, a child found a doorway to another world... Thus begins the tale of every kid and teen at Eleanor West's special boarding
school for former door-travelers, those who were whisked away to another world only to be returned, irrevocably changed, to an Earth that was
no longer home. But Antsy didn't just find one door to one world. She found a door to a nexus, a gathering place of lost items, and the vast
Shop Where the Lost Things Go... and at the nexus she found more doors to more worlds. Only the shopkeepers didn't tell her that each door she
opened cost her in time, until she was a nine-year-old mind in a sixteen-year-old body - and even at Eleanor West's school, among the peculiar
students, she can't find a way to fit in, not when she doesn't fit within herself, too physically old to be with the children and too mentally
young to connect with the teenagers. When a bully discovers her talent for finding misplaced and lost things - including doorways to other
worlds - Antsy feels trapped, until a group of other students helps her flee before being forced to find a door she very much does not wish to
find. Unfortunately, their flight necessitates traveling through yet more doors, to yet more worlds... and, in the nature of other worlds,
each challenges and tests the wayward children, changing them and their fates - possibly forever...
Review
I've been enjoying McGuire's Wayward Children series for a while, and still find them quite imaginative and poignant, yet part of me
is starting to wonder if the series is running a slight bit long, as there's a certain whiff of familiarity in the stories that unfold.
As with the other odd-numbered entries, this one continues the here-and-now arc of Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children and the core
group of questing friends who haven't broken the habit of heroism developed in other worlds. After the events at the competing, abusive
Whitethorn school, new students fill the halls, often traumatized by the experience and sometimes struggling to fit in. Eleanor West herself
seems to be showing her age, too, as her assessments of where to place these new students no longer make for the best possible matches; her
background in a Nonsense world seems to be coloring her judgement, and perhaps she's finally reaching the age and state of mental decline
that will let her return to her beloved realm beyond the patient door in the woods. As a result, students like Antsy find themselves at a
disadvantage, lacking the peer support they need to process their experiences and bond with new friends. It doesn't help that Antsy retains
her knack for finding lost things when they need finding, or that the skill has grown in her time away from the Shop. Thus, she doesn't know
whom she can turn to or trust when word of her special ability - including the ability to find lost doors that might lead a desperate child
back to worlds that have become their true homes - reaches the wrong ears... but Cora (once a mermaid of the Trenches), Kade (formerly a
champion of fairy realm of Prism), Christopher (who fell in love with the Skeleton Girl), and Sumi (who died and was resurrected by the
sugary Nonsense realm of Confection) - along with former Whitethorn student Emily (who still dreams of dancing again by the endless
bonfires in the world of Harvest) are of course ever-watchful and ever-ready to step in where they're needed. Once more, the core group is
off on another world-hopping jaunt, and though the worlds and trials are different, it starts feeling a bit similar to previous Wayward
Children installments. Along the way, they each must rethink the purpose (if there is any) to the doors, and what they really mean by the
ubiquitous warning to would-be travelers to "Be Sure" before stepping through. By now, the notion of going "home" to worlds beyond Earth
is less unthinkable than it was earlier in the series - indeed, despite Eleanor West's early assertions to the contrary, there seem to be
quite a few students who manage to find their way through doors again, if not back to the worlds they visited before than to new ones -
but "homecoming" is still something that must be understood and earned, and satisfaction is no more guaranteed than it is on Earth. For her
part, Antsy must finally confront the adults whose lies hurt her and cost her so dearly, but the other characters have their own
reconciliations and revelations to deal with.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, there starts to be a hint of familiarity about the story, beyond the marvelous new sights
and wonders and dangers and revelations. I'm starting to wonder just how long the series is intended to run. The prequel even-number books
are becoming the strongest entries, untethered by the here-and-now arc that could use a little more momentum and direction. Beyond that,
it's another enjoyable entry in a very enjoyable series.
