Rutabaga's Reads 2026: Part 13

My commitment to the Wayward Children Series is going strong. I started reading this set of books in June. Thanks again to my coworker, Brittany, for the series recommendation!

            FYI: The write-ups are in chronological order.

In an Absent Dream (Jan. 8, 2019) by Seanan McGuire.

<This is the fourth novel in a series.>

In a house in an ordinary town is Katherine Victoria Lundy. She’s “ordinary enough to have become remarkable entirely without noticing it.” She’s a child who’s mature beyond her years. She’s complex, quiet, self-assured. She loves books as well as rules, and when she’s eight, she is “always sure” as she steps through an impossible door into a tree with leaves running the entire spectrum of green. She enters the Goblin Market, “a place where dreamers go when they don’t fit in with the dreams their homes think worth dreaming,” first meeting Moon (who’s smart but sometimes careless) and then the Archivist (as old as the Market’s time). The latter explains the rules. Katherine chooses to go by Lundy, and she must learn about fair value. If one doesn’t learn fair value, debt will follow, and one probably won’t care to experience what fully happens when too much debt is incurred. Lundy often gets meat pies and fruit pies from Vincent, a unicorn-centaur. There’s Mockery, too, but we never actually meet her. Lundy returns to her family, but that place is no longer home. She knows that she’ll become a permanent resident of the Goblin Market before curfew. Because she is sure. What she doesn’t know is that she’s going to make a bargain that was better left in the bin.

            Another standalone fantasy comes forth as the fourth title in the Wayward Children Series. The gothic portal fantasy is also a magical realism tale that is capricious and logical in equal measure. Despite its slim length, it blooms with complexity, imagination and the rustle of wings. This is a fable of youth who don’t fit a mold and prime world-building. It’s a story suffused with pragmatism to balance what’s unfair, sagacity to the tale’s fairy tale fancy.

            Books One Through Three

            1: Every Heart a Doorway

            2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones

            3: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Come Tumbling Down (Jan. 7, 2020) by Seanan McGuire.

<This is the fifth novel in a series.>

<Alert: Potential spoilers ahead.>

Always exuding cold calm and aloof logic, mad scientist-in-training Jack Wolcott is carried through a door from the Moors into Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children by Alexis. Jack is unconscious and, in a nasty turn of events, is residing in Jill’s body. Jill stole Jack’s never-been-dead body so she can fulfill her fanatical dream of becoming Master vampire’s vampire daughter. Dr. Bleak bought them time to leave and likely paid with his life. Jack aspires to be a mad scientist herself and knows she’s a monster – the Moors makes monsters of everyone – but this is madder than Jack or Dr. Bleak would ever conceive (and Jack has a horse named Pony who’s made up of many animal skins, so, just saying). As Sumi so indelicately puts it, “...this is bonus terrible. This is the awful sprinkles on the sundae of doom.” She doesn’t want to need it, but she needs help. Kade, Christopher, Sumi and Cora (the only one Jack doesn’t know) heed her request. The Drowned Gods will call to one, another will fall heroically into the sea, and Jack, the ridiculously scientific-headed, is unraveling. If Jack doesn’t get her body back, if she fails, the Moors will be unbalanced, and that is, perhaps, the most monstrous thing of all.

            The standalone fifth installment in the Wayward Children Series is a dark portal fantasy that also suits the horror genre. Sumi’s nonsensical manner and forthright speech counterbalance Jack’s unsympathetic manner and equally blunt speech. Sumi is a rainbow of bold colors to Jack’s miasma of bleak tones. It’s all a bit deranged with Jill the shining beacon topping the cuckoo cake. The series continues to be inclusive, bittersweet and evocative. McGuire’s prose gets readers to think as she regales. In a story of Jack and Jill, who will come tumbling down?

            Noteworthy lines: “Science is my god. Lightning is my miracle, and storm clouds are my catechism.” --Jack Wolcott

Across the Green Grass Fields (Jan. 12, 2021) by Seanan McGuire.

<This is the sixth novel in a series.>

Welcome to the Hooflands, where humans are heroes and lightning rods for disaster. Regan Lewis loves horses, and in the world she was born in, horses are acceptable. When one of her best friends is shunned by the best friend she wants more, she doesn’t fully understand the scope of her mistake until it’s too late. She’s sure at 10 years old when she walks through a door in the woods near her house, not knowing she’ll be gone for six years. She expects she’s dreaming when she comes across a unicorn and is further in awe when a centaur comes to find the wandering creature. Pansy is the centaur who finds Regan, and she’s ecstatic to find a human. Humans in the Hooflands mean something big is going to happen, but Regan doesn’t want to be a hero, nor does she believe in destiny. She’s finally found where she belongs and Chicory, a centaur her age, is like the best friend she always had even when they’ve just met. She loves her time with the herd, but being the only human in the land means potential danger for her and maltreatment to other centaurs. She’ll have to be the hero she doesn’t want to be in a land that is not as equal as it seems with creatures that may eat her if given the opportunity (beware the kelpies and perytons).

            The sixth short novel in the Wayward Children Series features all-new characters, making it a good choice for anyone wanting to read a true standalone story. The portal fantasy begins with the ups and downs of girlhood. It’s easy, as an adult, to see that Laurel is a terrible friend and an entitled bully, but that’s hard for Regan to see when she’s the kid that doesn’t want to be ostracized and seen as other for any reason. (FYI: My mother would NEVER have let me get away with snubbing Heather.) I’d wondered how I’d feel about a story featuring characters I didn’t yet know in a series that I’m now six books into, but I needn’t have doubted. Life in the Hooflands is an adventure, an education and a bildungsroman. It’s another wondrous tale that has heart (and many hooves).