By Seanan McGuire
This book is about children who return from other lands through secret, impossible, and sympathetic doors. I’ll get back to the sympathetic part. Upon their return, their parents assume they were lost or kidnapped, and the children have created these fanciful stories as coping mechanisms to endure their trauma. These lands are all numerous and varied, being Nonsense, Logic, Wicked, etc. dominant. Whatever land they fall/trip/jump/run into through their door, each child seems to have something within them that feels that they are finally home, an intrinsic sympathy to the place. Some part of them has always wanted to speak solely in rhyme, remain as still as the dead for hours, or lead soldiers in battle to win back a kingdom.
As parents are initially overjoyed at the child’s return (usually), they struggle as the child refuses to let go of the “delusion” and seem to lose their wits. The parents then go to Miss West and her school for Wayward Children. Prim, proper, and elderly Miss West assures the guardians that these children are indeed very troubled, but she has the proven solution. Though the home seems like a prison from the initial interview, the children soon find solace and a community with others who have had similar experiences and are also desperately trying to get back to the land from which they came. The teachers are kind, nurturing, and aware the children are not crazy as some of them have had the sam experience.
Once the newest child, Nancy, arrives, things begin to be even more strange than usual. Nancy found a door to the Underworld, and had served the Lord of the Dead. This world she returned to is now too fast, too bright, and too glutinous for her. But as she starts to desperately miss the Underworld, something familiar is presented to her: a dead body. The body is a student, her roommate in fact. Combined with her recent arrival from the Underworld, Nancy becomes the prime suspect. Can she found out who really did it? Will they strike again?
I liked this book, though I would have preferred a bit more meat to it. Everything is fast-paced and quite an interesting premise. Who hasn’t wished for a magic door to a new land throughout their childhood (and maybe during stressful times as an adult)? I would recommend this to others, and will likely continue the series.
Pros & Cons & Potential Spoilers
Pros
- Some great, noncomformist characters
- Great premise
- The setting is magical, even at the less magical school they all attend
Cons
- I figured out the killer pretty quickly
- I’d like to have had more about the students’ lands and what they did there – a bit more character development
- Eleanor West does not seem as pivotal a role as I initially thought when I started the book