author : Seanan McGuire

When Jenna’s sister Patty dies in New York, Jenna blames herself, can’t cope, and ends up also dying. Although Patty had died when her time had come, Jenna has died too early. Much too early. So now she’s a ghost in New York, trying to earn her extra time by talking down potential suicides. But then the other ghosts start disappearing, and Jenna discovers that she has more to do than work a suicide hotline if she is to save them, and herself, from a fate literally worse than death.

This is another of McGuire’s lyrical ghost stories, inventing a mythology for the USA. It’s only a novella (180 short pages), and it zips along, so it’s a good single sitting read.

The alchemist Reed has had twins Roger and Dodger constructed, so that they can manifest The Doctrine and make him all powerful. They need to be raised apart, one with Maths, one with Words, so they do not manifest too early. But they are stronger than he realises, and connect with each other before he is ready. Reed believes he can control them, but if not, he can always destroy them and start again. But he has forgotten the most important rule of Alchemy. Never create a being more powerful than yourself.

This is a marvellous book. In the acknowledgements, McGuire says that she has had the book in mind for a long time, but waited until now because she didn't have the skill to write it earlier. She certainly has the skill to write it now.

Set in modern day America, yet with a lyrical, fantastical feel, constructed children who are nevertheless very real, weird happenings that slowly begin to make sense, contradictory foreshadowings that heighten the tension, real tragedy and heartbreak, and a stunning finale that is a perfect resolution, yet leaves you wanting more: this is a masterpiece.

16-year-old Rose Marshall died on her way to the prom, driven off the road by Bobby Cross. For the last 60 years she has walked the ghostroads, helping other car crash victims cross over safely, taking sustenance from the kindness of strangers. She is quite safe from the unkind strangers, being dead. But she is not safe from Bobby Cross, who needs to take her soul in his quest for immortality. She has spent the last 60 years running from him. But now she decides to run no more.

For the first few chapters, I didn’t really enjoy this. It’s very episodic, each chapter feeling a bit like a stand-alone short story. And it is trying to build a myth out of the depth of history, which I find hard to take seriously when it’s about American highways. (“Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.”) However, I persevered, as I like the author’s other work. And that perseverance was rewarded; the tale builds in depth, and character, and tension. Rose moves from being a naive teenager to an experienced ghostwalker (even if the timeline skips around, to help build the background), realising that she has to confront the being who killed her. And the various other characters – alive and dead – flesh things out well.

So as well as the gritty urban fantasy of the October Daye novels, here we have McGuire doing a more lyrical rural fantasy.

Rose Marshall might still look sixteen, but she’s been a ghost for sixty years, helping truckers and hitchhikers, and coming to terms with her new place in the world, and her new boyfriend/car. But her killer Bobby Cross is still after her, and his latest ploy has her trapped in her now worst nightmare: alive again! If she can’t die soon, and in the right way, she might lose everything. A Greek god may be her only hope.

I found this second book in the story of Rose Marshall much easier to get into: it doesn’t spend any time drawing background, but starts immediately with a dangerous crisis, and doesn’t let up. It’s pacey, with a great take on ancient Greek legends, and new perils and heartbreaks waiting for Rose. It has a little less of lyrical feel than the previous book, since much of it takes place in the world of the living, but it still works very well.

Special Agent Henrietta Marchen works for the ATI Bureau, keeping the world safe from narrative incursion. And she knows the problems better than many: she’s an unactivated Snow White, and needs to avoid apples. Her partners include an activated Shoemaker’s Elf, and an unactivated Wicked Sister, who could be trying to murder her. And Henry might just need to activate a Pied Piper to solve her latest case.

This is a sort of urban fantasy take on the background to Lackey’s “Five Hundred Kingdoms” series, or maybe “Once Upon a Time” meets “Grimm”.

The book started life as a serialised novel, and I thought it was going to be rather patchy, with a disjoint “monster of the episode” structure, and a lot of recapitulation to help new readers. But is soon settles down into a solid arc, and early events that seem to be unconnected all come together. It’s got a good snarky vibe, and an interesting play on fairy tales, how we don’t know the old ones that well any more, and how new ones are coming in to take their place.

Henry Marchen’s life gets even more complicated now that she is an activated Snow White. She has to lead her team against a rogue Cinderella, which might mean that she has to embrace her status, which might kill her. And in trying to save the world, she puts her team in terrible danger.

This sequel carries on directly from where the previous book left off, with the team undergoing a review of that case. Again we have a few seemingly disjoint chapters, and again they are shown to be more relevant than we first realised. We find out more about Henry’s brother who escaped being a Rose Red, and much more about Sloane and how she got to be a Wicked Sister. We see some of the tragic downsides of incarcerating activated fairy tale characters to protect the rest of the world, and we learn more about the original form of various fairy tales.

Although we know from this style of book that everything will work out in the end, it’s not at all clear how that will happen, and who will suffer and be lost along the way. I’m looking forward to more tales in this world.

Sir Toby Daye is a Changeling: half human, half fae, fitting in neither world. She was a PI working for the fae, but now, barely recovered from a traumatic captivity, is passing as human, ekeing out a minimum wage existence in San Francisco. But when an old pureblood friend is murdered, cursing Toby with her dying breath to find her killers, she is thrown back into the deadly fae world.

This is a combination of urban fantasy and noir detective work. Toby is the kind of detective who gets beat up and shot until she figures out who the bad guys are. This is lifted above the ordinary by having a rich backstory (for example, this incident where Toby got her hotly-contested knighthood is mentioned only in passing) and a dark, complex fae society. There are lots of different races of fae, useful to ensure that not everyone has a complete set of superpowers.

Toby solves this crime, but it costs her dearly. The main story finishes, but there are oodles of loose threads ready for a series. I'm interested to see if she uses the same blood-spattered detection techniques in her future cases.

Sir Toby Daye's liege, Sylvester, has sent her off on a mission to discover why his niece January has dropped out of contact. It's politically sensitive, as January's domain sits on a sensitive border, but it seems a simple enough task, and so Sylvester gets Toby to take along Quentin, as part of his training. Of course, it's not at all simple, and Toby becomes trapped in a battle with a serial killer.

More great urban fantasy, here in a high tech software company. It uses the classic "last man standing" ploy for identifying the killer (although the identity is pretty obvious early on), and again, Toby sheds a lot of blood along the way, and pays a high price in the end. We get to see a few new kinds of Fae, plus more on the problem of being a Changeling who can't fit into either the human or the Fae world. One niggle: Toby seems to have mostly forgotten about her previous family. Will that plot point re-emerge later in the series?

Children -- pureblood, changeling, human -- have been stolen, including two from Toby Daye's best friends. So she sets out to get them back. But the thief is Blind Michael, stealing new children to make up his Wild Hunt. Toby will have to travel to his realm by one of the three deadly paths. And her Fetch has turned up on her doorstep, so she knows this quest will end in her death. But can she get the children back first?

This has Toby firmly back in the land of the Fae, where she gets put through the wringer more than once. The pace doesn't let up, and the ghastly ghostly dark lands where Blind Michael rules and brilliantly atmospheric. There's no real detecting here, just a quest to free the stolen kids. But Toby has to fight the bad guys just as much. And the interaction with children keeps bringing her back to thoughts of her own lost daughter.

Based on a survey of three so far, I think the books set mainly in Fae's domains work better than those more in the "real" world: a combination of Toby's kick-ass grit and the dangerous Fae works better than kick-ass grit in mundania.

Sir Toby Daye suffers again for Faerie. This time, her friend Lily, and her liege's wife Luna, are being poisoned. She knows the culprit is Oleander, who was responsible for her own loss of 14 years. But Luna's mad daughter Raysel is determined to implicate Toby, and the Queen of Faerie also wants Toby dead. And indeed, no-one else can detect Oleander. Is Toby instead going mad as part of her Changeling curse? Worse still, Toby's Fetch, May, is sure their time is soon.

More fast frantic action as Toby goes up against powerful foes, but discovers just how many friends she has. I'm not sure how much more the pain level can ramp up: Toby barely recovers from one set of most-painful-ever injuries before encountering a new even-more-painful set. But she bulls through in her own inimitable fashion. And she discovers some interesting things about her past, which are bound to have interesting consequences in the future...

Countess Toby Daye is settling in to her new role in the Goldengreen knowe, when, as usual, disaster strikes. Someone has kidnapped the two sons of Duchess Diana Lorden of the Undersea. If the sons are not returned within three days, the Undersea will go to war with the Queen of the Mists, and a lot of people will die. Toby promises to find them, return them, and uncover the culprit. And then things get personal.

An interesting expansion of the mythology, incorporating the undersea kingdom and its denizens. We already know Connor is a Selkie, but here we get the whole nine yards. There's a little less slam-bam action than in previous books, as Toby races around, trying to find who has taken the children (clear fairly soon on), and where they have been taken (which requires interrogating a few reticent rocks), whilst foiling the odd assassination attempt. It does, however, build up to a shattering finale. It will be interesting to see what Toby does next.

!!! WARNING : SPOILERS FOR One Salt Sea !!!

Sir Toby Daye is causing concern to her friends: since losing both Connor and her daughter, she has been putting herself in stupid danger. However, that all changes when Etienne, another of Sylvester's knights, comes to her with a most unlikely call for help: his daughter Chelsea is missing. Worse than that, she's a changeling who can't control her powers, which might just rip Faerie apart. Toby is now back on track doing what she does best: risking her life to save children. And Tybalt, King of the Cats, lends a paw.

Toby suffers again, but this time it's more physical than mental anguish, as she struggles to find Chelsea, with the bad guys and a treacherous cat faction against her. However, she is now more willing to let her friends help her out. There is another shattering finale, but it's not personally shattering for Toby, so it is all rather less traumatic than usual. Indeed, if it wasn't for the fact there is another book announced, I would be happy to believe this was the end of the series. And a very good series it is too, so I'm glad Toby will be back.

Sir Toby Daye discovers an epidemic of goblin fruit on the streets. The drug is debilitating for Faerie, but is lethally addictive to halfbreeds and humans. Toby has to do the right thing, so she raises the issue with the Queen of the Mists, without much hope for a solution. But the Queen’s response is worse than she could imagine. So Toby finds herself in another race against time to save not only the kids at risk of goblin fruit, but herself. A lot of people are going to be very annoyed with her.

Again, Toby gets put through the wringer. But now, she has a gang of friends to help her; although that does mean that some of them get put through the wringer, too. But this is yet another great race against time. Like all these books, the events along the way, and the solution, have real consequences, for the people involved, and for future plot possibilities.

Sir Toby Daye’s job is to fight the bad guys on behalf of the good guys. She is very good at her job. But now, she discovers that some of the good guys might have been deceiving her, and some of the bad guys might have a different view of events. She has to relearn where she stands, who she can rely on, and who she fights.

In some sense the previous seven books have been getting Toby to this point, where she can start asking the right questions, and where she has the strength, and the backing, to cope with the dangerous answers. As ever, things rapidly get complicated, and seem likely to stay that way for a while yet, as those answers lead to yet more questions, and to more dangerous foes.

Sir Toby Daye is given her hardest task ever: Queen Windermere sends her to the neighbouring Silences as a diplomat to prevent a war. Diplomacy is not exactly her strong point. So it comes as no surprise when her solution to avoiding the impending hostilities is somewhat undiplomatic.

Despite her magical self-healing abilities, Toby isn’t invulnerable, and it’s interesting to see her here, well outside her comfort zone, subject to some old enemies and weaknesses. Her solution to her task comes as no surprise once the possibility has appeared, but it’s always interesting to watch Toby, and now her gang, power through the bad guys with a real possibility of failure.

And the way she solves the problem is going to change everything.

At the end of A Red-Rose Chain, Toby solves her problem in a way that will change everything. And not everyone in Faerie is happy with change. So a Convocation is assembled, to discuss if Toby’s solution should be embraced, or suppressed. Toby is invited along to testify. Then the murders start, and Toby has a new set of problems to solve. And her solution this time could cause another headache for Faerie. Maybe they should just stop asking her to solve their problems…

Another great outing for Toby Daye, as she is enmeshed ever deeper, and always unwilling, in Faerie politics. Here she is, outranked by nearly everyone at the Convocation, given a task to do, then put in a situation where it is nearly impossible to do it. Just another day in Faerie for Toby, then.

My edition includes a novella, “Dreams and Slumbers”, after the main novel (which, irritatingly, therefore finishes about 70pp before I thought it would). This follows on directly from the main action, told from Queen Windemere’s point of view, as she tries to save her brother. Here we get to see Toby as others see her, as a sort of lethal whirlwind messing up the lives of all who come into contact with her; we learn a bit more about the Luidaeg, too.

Toby Day discovers she has a long lost sister when her mother, Amandine, demands Toby bring her home, and kidnaps Tybalt and Jazz as hostages to her success, forcing them into their animal forms. Toby has to act fast, before the hostages are lost to their animal selves. The only person she can turn to for help in her quest is Simon Torquill, the man who destroyed her previous life.

This is a relatively straightforward quest plot, but the intensity lies in Toby’s relationships with the beings she meets on the way, and her growing understanding of Simon. There are some shattering moments as Toby is put through the wringer, again, and the ending is tragic and unexpected.

Don’t start the series here; there’s too much crucial backstory. But do start at the beginning, read it up to here, and beyond.

There are adventures to be had in fantasy lands. But what happens when you come back from Fairyland, or Narnia, or wherever? How do you readjust to Mundania? Can you readjust? Or will you break, fruitlessly searching for your lost life, your true home?

Eleanor West runs a boarding schools for those children who can’t readjust. Their parents think them damaged, or wayward, or mad. Eleanor knows better, having herself returned from a Netherworld. Most learn to cope, in the company of those who understand. A few, a very few, find their way back. But when new girl Nancy arrives, dark things start happening, and the school itself is threatened. Is Nancy the source, or the trigger, of these events?

Life After Fantasy has always struck me as an issue. The scene at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where the Pevensie children return home after decades in Narnia, always horrified me: they had been adult royalty; how did they cope with being ordinary children again? Jo Walton tackles this issue in her wonderful short story, Relentlessly Mundane. Here Seanan McGuire tackles it differently, in a 170pp novella.

Despite wanting to go to Lewis’ Narnia (for the Talking Animals, if not for the sexism, racism, classism, bad theology, and shoddy plotting), and to Phillips’ Fairyland, I didn’t find myself attracted to any of the Netherworlds described by McGuire. (And I don’t think that’s just because there are no Pauline Baynes illustrations, or that I am half a century older than when I read the originals.) However, that lack of attraction is not a problem: it just serves to illustrate how everyone is different, and what is hearts-ease for one may be horror for another. But, consistently, Mundania is home for none.

This is not a typical school story, as it does not dwell on any lessons, except for some interesting Netherworld classification schemes. Nancy as new girl allows for some expository passages, but not that many. The tale focuses mainly on the deadly goings-on that threaten the school. And even there, we do not get a lot, since this is a novella. But McGuire does paint vivid pictures of the various main characters, and the very different homes they wish to return to. I wish this was a novel rather than a novella, and you can’t say fairer than that.

We first meet ‘identical’ twins Jack, apprentice to a mad scientist, and Jill, wannabe vampire, in Every Heart a Doorway. This is their backstory: their terrible life in Mundania, their escape to their own fantasy land, their training there and how it made and broke them, and why they returned back to their parents’ house (I cannot say to their home).

This is another novella, and so not much space to spare on inessentials. I suppose it is necessary to spend several chapters to show why their prior home life as Jacqueline and Jillian is so bad that the fantasy land is such a release. But I would have like to see more of Jack’s life in particular: apprentice to a mad scientist. We move very briskly from their arrival to their pitchfork-assisted departure, and get to understand very well why they end up as they do.

I’m very glad that Wayward Children has turned out to be a series.

The residents at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children are used to strange occurrences, for each has been to a fantasy world of their own, which has ejected them, and to which they long to return. Yet even they are surprised when a strange girl, Rini, lands with a splash, looking for her mother. For Suni died at the school, many years before her daughter would have been born. But Rini needs to find Suni to save her entire world. It’s a pity the Home has a rule against quests.

So, naturally, this is a quest. We meet characters we have seen before, all broken in their own ways by their past experiences, who band together to help Rini in her quest. Given this is a novella, the plot is fairly linear, but we get to see a couple of strange worlds, the characters grow and learn about themselves, and there is a satisfying resolution to the main issue.

Another good addition to the series. Even if it did make my teeth ache in places.

This latest entry in the Wayward Children series is stand alone: we follow the story of Katherine Lundy from when she first discovers her own fantasy world of the Goblin Market, with its rigidly enforced rules of fair exchange, until the fateful day she has to decide whether to stay with her family, or stay in the world of her heart’s desire.

The other books in the series show the devastating effect on the children of being returned to their mundane worlds. Here we see the devastating effects on the family of the children disappearing in the first place. I find it interesting that of all the various fantasy world McGuire has shown us in this series, absolutely none of them sound like a place I would want to spend more than a few minutes, yet they are clearly ideal homes for the characters in the stories, who nevertheless are rudely evicted. At least here, Lundy is given the choice. Someone so keen on following rules and regulations should have a better understanding of the price of exploiting loopholes.

Jack returns to her friends in deep distress, inhabiting the body of her revived sister Jill. Jill has performed the swap so that she can be made into a Vampire. Jack needs to get her body back soon, before Jill undergoes the transformation, and before Jack’s OCD drives her mad. She will need her friends’ help to do so.

This is another great entry in the series. Despite the fact that not a lot seems to happen for a while, and then there is a frantic rush to resolve things, the overall account is riveting.