Format: Kindle Edition, 174 pages
Release Date: April 5th 2016
Publisher: Tor
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy
Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests
Children
have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through
the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down
rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.
But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.
Nancy
tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they
change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too
well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.
But
Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just
around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her
new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.
No matter the cost.
Every Heart a Doorway is the first
installment in author Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children. Eleanor
West's School for Wayward Children is a magical and dark atmosphere.
It is a story that is character driven. Each of the individuals we meet in this
story has returned from a portal world, think Alice in Wonderland or The
Chronicles of Narnia, and find themselves unable to cope with life back in
our world. Hence their placement at the School for Wayward Children. This
story introduces readers to a cast of character who you will meet in the rest
of the novellas to come.
"I was looking for a bucket in the cellar of our house, and I found this door I’d never seen before. When I went through, I was in a grove of pomegranate trees. I thought I’d fallen and hit my head. I kept going because … because…”
“How long were you gone?”
The question was meaningless. Nancy shook her head. “Forever. Years … I was
there for years. I didn’t want to come back. Ever.”
Nancy is the newest arrival at the Mrs West’s Home for Wayward Children. She is
one of many children who found a doorway and ended up elsewhere. She came from
a place that you could call the Netherworld. She literally danced with the Lord
of the Dead leaving her hair shocking white. She didn’t want to leave but was
told to make sure she’s making the right choice before coming back. Curiously
or not, tragedy strike almost immediately when her roommate Sumi is found dead,
and subsequent deaths make it possible that Eleanor will have to close the
school to protect the children.
The cast of this book
can be best described as: every single token-[insert minority of your choice
here] character, written in the most clichéd and flat way possible,
combined. This extends to both their characters, as well as their worlds and
honestly does more to further some prejudices than it does to counter them. The
most identifiable characters in this book are Jack and Jill who will star in
the next installment Down Among the Sticks and Bones.
This is a dark book, but it's not without dark humor. The teenagers in this book are, well, teenagers. And no matter what world they've visited, the snark and rebellion is still there.
Release Date: June 13th 2017
Publisher: Tor.com
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy
This is the story of what happened first…
Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.
Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got.
They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.
They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.
Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the second installment in author Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. If you've read Every Heart a Doorway then you know how Jack and Jill's story ends in that book, now you can see how their story came to be. For Twelve years, the girls were expected to follow what their parents planned for them. Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.
Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got. Jill was always brave because Jack was always behind her. But what their parents never realized because they were too busy with their own lives, is that a minefield of resent and resignation was primed to explode by from girls. As the girls are exploring their grandmother’s former abode, they come across a hidden stairway.
The twin sisters' doorway is quite different from Nancy's in Every Heart a Doorway. Their doorway, the Moors, is a place of neutral territory surrounded by vampires, werewolves, gargoyles, and Drowned God worshipers. A few individuals, like Dr. Bleak, are excited when children stumble through from portals from different worlds. This is where you learn that there are worlds built on rainbows and rain. World’s that are mathematical, and where everyone chimes like a crystal. There are worlds of light and darkness, worlds of rhyme and reason, and worlds here the only thing that matters is the heart of the hero.
The Moors exist in eternal twilight, between lightning strike and resurrection. The girls are given three days of safety before they are expected to make a choice. A choice between a vampire master and Dr. Bleak who could be this story’s Dr. Frankenstein. Jack and Jill stumble stay for five years. In those short five years, the girls discover who they are and who they want to be. Jack thrives as Bleak’s apprentice; Jill ends up with the Master and spends her life in the lap of luxury hoping that she will become his true daughter when she turns 18.
This is not a happy ending type story. If you’ve read Every Heart a Doorway, then you know there is something terribly wrong with Jill that destroys any happiness that Jack may have found with Dr. Bleak and Alexis, the girl who won her heart. There’s maybe a smidgen too much of a preachifying tone to this exploration here, and it’s drilled in a bit too hard and often, that you want to throw up your hands and scream, I GET IT damn you!
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