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Every Heart a Doorway: Seanan McGuire
Oct. 23rd, 2017 11:10 pmOH BOY this book.
I read it for book club and then I managed to miss book club (it was Monday! On Tuesday, I looked at my email again....) and I have feelings about it. And by feelings, I mean I pretty much hated it by the end.
The book's premise is that it's set at a boarding school for the children who have gone through the portals of Fantasyland and then been spat back out. The way the Pensevie children grow up, become kings and queens, and then tumble back out of the wardrobe as children again - that's always been a bit of a weird cognitive dissonance for me, because while on one hand, it's great for the story for them to achieve those prophecies and rule a great kingdom and all. On the other hand, I can't imagine going an adult right back to a child and not having major issues. If right now I went back to being eight, keeping those memories, I'd be so messed up! And I don't even rule a kingdom.
The story's told through the perspective of a newly-returned girl, who went to a kingdom of the dead. Silent, unmoving, black. Six months pass in the real world, but much longer in the other world, and she's unsurprisingly pretty different when she comes back. Her parents, concerned, send her to Miss Eleanor West's boarding school.
( Reader, I did not enjoy this. Also, I'm spoiling the end of the book. It was bad. How did this win a Hugo?! )
3/10 because I also read Walden this year. Walden deserves 0/10, possibly lower than that. But yeah. I did not like this, do not recommend. You want portal fantasy? Don't even bother.
ETA: I just made myself mad by reading reviews. You know what a resilient heroine looks like for kids who were weird and didn't fit in? Growing up, trying, sometimes failing, making a space for themselves. NOT AN ENDING WHERE BAM, PERFECT WORLD DROPPED IN THEIR LAP! What an utterly stupid statement. What's emotional payoff, what's character arc, what's "creating a gothic world" (haha except no because we see none of it)? Argh!
I read it for book club and then I managed to miss book club (it was Monday! On Tuesday, I looked at my email again....) and I have feelings about it. And by feelings, I mean I pretty much hated it by the end.
The book's premise is that it's set at a boarding school for the children who have gone through the portals of Fantasyland and then been spat back out. The way the Pensevie children grow up, become kings and queens, and then tumble back out of the wardrobe as children again - that's always been a bit of a weird cognitive dissonance for me, because while on one hand, it's great for the story for them to achieve those prophecies and rule a great kingdom and all. On the other hand, I can't imagine going an adult right back to a child and not having major issues. If right now I went back to being eight, keeping those memories, I'd be so messed up! And I don't even rule a kingdom.
The story's told through the perspective of a newly-returned girl, who went to a kingdom of the dead. Silent, unmoving, black. Six months pass in the real world, but much longer in the other world, and she's unsurprisingly pretty different when she comes back. Her parents, concerned, send her to Miss Eleanor West's boarding school.
( Reader, I did not enjoy this. Also, I'm spoiling the end of the book. It was bad. How did this win a Hugo?! )
3/10 because I also read Walden this year. Walden deserves 0/10, possibly lower than that. But yeah. I did not like this, do not recommend. You want portal fantasy? Don't even bother.
ETA: I just made myself mad by reading reviews. You know what a resilient heroine looks like for kids who were weird and didn't fit in? Growing up, trying, sometimes failing, making a space for themselves. NOT AN ENDING WHERE BAM, PERFECT WORLD DROPPED IN THEIR LAP! What an utterly stupid statement. What's emotional payoff, what's character arc, what's "creating a gothic world" (haha except no because we see none of it)? Argh!
