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).

Rutabaga's Reads 2026: Part 7

It is a commitment to begin a new series, but this one is comprised of short novels. I tend to gravitate toward fantasy stories, so this series is right up my alley. As of this posting, there are 11 published books with the twelfth slated for publication early next year. I plan to read and review each of them. Thanks to my coworker, Brittany, for the recommendation!

            FYI: The write-ups are in chronological order.

Every Heart a Doorway (Apr. 5, 2016) by Seanan McGuire.

<This is the first novel in a series.>

There sits an elegant manor. It houses Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Eleanor – once little Ely West – has a door that remains open, though that is not the norm for most who cross the threshold of her house. They come desperate to return to the worlds they have visited. They are desperate to find their doors. This includes Nancy Whitman, who’s just arrived. She went to the Halls of the Dead and plans to return to the darkness and stillness and right otherness of that Underworld. All this color and fast movement is as nonsensical to her as terms like Nonsense, Logic, Wickedness and Virtue (world types). But Nancy’s only just arrived, and three students are murdered in quick succession. Who’s an easier target to blame than the new girl with darkness in her veins? Fortunately, Nancy has comrades in Kade (Prism: a Fairyland), Jack Addams (the Moors with a mad scientist) and Christopher (Mariposa/Country of the Bones: a world of happy, dancing skeletons).

            Here is a gothic fantasy series opener for adults that is a grown-up version of holding childlike imagination. When one door closes, the door each of these people want may not actually open again. Or it may be lurking, but the traveler isn’t looking in the right place. This short novel is a gem of darkness, yearning and hope. The story can be mean, and it isn’t typically pretty. It’s a portal fantasy that’s “Grimm” but strangely charming, too. It is for every person who’s ever felt out of place, but I hope you, dear reader, don’t have to portal to another world to find your home.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (June 13, 2017) by Seanan McGuire.

<This is the second novel in a series.>

When Chester and Serena Wolcott got pregnant, it was for the convenience of a handsome baby boy or a beautiful baby girl. When they were told they were expecting twins, they were smug about the idea, how it “smacked of efficiency.” Instead of a girl and a boy, out came two girls: Jacqueline and Jillian. While Louise Wolcott (a.k.a. Gemma Lou) tried to raise them with love, she was kicked out by her son after five years. The twins were given a type according to their parents’ whims: Jacqueline got the frilly dresses and long tresses, while Jillian got the pixie cuts and sports gear. When they’re 12, Jack and Jill open an old steamer trunk holding an impossible stairway instead of clothes and costume jewelry. They find the Moors. They are promised three safe nights, but Jack leaves with Dr. Bleak after only one, and Master despises being selected second. Jill had already chosen him, though. The same of face, Jack and Jill are competitors as well as companions, but here, where a vampire and a mad scientist reside, they are as different as night and day in a land of eternal twilight. Jack learns of love from Alexis, a plump, well-endowed teen whom she and Dr. Bleak once resurrected, but Jill does not. Yearning to become Master’s daughter, she chooses ruthlessness. She also chooses desperation, and it has devastating results for the both of them.

            While someone could read this without reading the first book, I’d still start at the beginning. Jack and Jill are 17 in the series starter, but this is the story of what happened first. It gives context to why they wound up at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. The Moors are dark and fantastical, but they aren’t the only land through that doorway, and I do wish more had been said about the werewolf lords of eternal winter in the mountains and the Drowned Gods of the sea. McGuire’s prose is lyrical even when upset and is lush in its discontent. The second short novel in the Wayward Children Series is richly crafted, a gothic fantasy charmer with horror always at its heels.

Beneath the Sugar Sky (Jan. 9, 2018) by Seanan McGuire.

<This is the third novel in a series.>

<Alert: Potential spoilers ahead.>

A girl falls from the sky and lands with a splash in the pond behind Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, her sugary dress dissolving and leaving her [confidently] naked. The girl is Onishi Rini, from Confection, a “land of the culinary art become miracle.” She is looking for Sumi, her mother (who was in political exile per the Countess of Candy Floss), not expecting to hear that her mother was murdered. Rini is from a Nonsense world, and Reality cannot stop her quest. But without Sumi existing, Rini’s story is dissolving. Rini sets off with Kade (Goblin Prince: Prism), Cora (Mermaid: the Trenches), Christopher, beloved of the Princess of Skeletons (Mariposa) and Nadya (Drowned Girl: Belyyreka). They travel to the Land of the Dead to meet with Nancy, who was at the Home, but was able to find her door again, but there is a cost. One of them must stay behind. With Sumi’s walking skeleton (it cannot talk and has no soul), the group falls into Confection. Literally. Here, the world rearranges itself so that anywhere is within a day’s walk from one’s starting point: “A good day’s journey is like baking soda: use it well, and the cake will rise up to meet you.” To everyone’s dismay, they’re captured by the Queen of Cakes’ soldiers. Without Sumi to overthrow her, she’s back in power. They’ll have to escape a jail of baked gingerbread bricks “glued” together with hard-packed frosting and trick the cakey queen if they’ve any hope of finding the mythical Baker and baking Sumi back to life.

            The third in McGuire’s Wayward Children Series is a magical, restorative tale of adventure, baking and friendship. The gothic portal fantasy exists with reality, even when reality for one world is nonsensical to another, and this story homes in on a character’s struggle with self-acceptance as readers are wooed by robust and zesty prose. This installment is another diverse one, and it happens to contain a world where milk grows on trees and candy corn farms exist. It’s a world where brownies are perfect treats that also double as roofing materials. It’s a world where the Wizard of Fondant can whip up sugar traveling beads. It’s a world where one might go to great lengths to save Confection, even if it means, “I was just a candy shell filled with shadows.” Most importantly, it’s a world where “...everything was different, and everything was finally the same.”