Book #75 of 2023: Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #8) Four-and-a-half stars, rounded up. My previous ratings for this fantasy novella series have ranged from two stars (#6) to four stars (#1, #2, and #3), and this is easily the finest of the lot to date. If you aren’t …
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Book #15 of 2022: Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #7) I might be over this series, which initially wowed me in its considerations of children who depart from dangerous yet fulfilling fantasy worlds only to discover a mundane life that no longer understands them. There’s great pathos in that concept …
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Book #36 of 2021: Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker (The Up-and-Under #1) This is a cute children’s fantasy adventure, sort of like a cross between The Phantom Tollbooth and L. Frank Baum’s classic Oz series. It’s also a bit metatextual, as “A. Deborah Baker” is a pen name for the real author …
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Book #18 of 2021: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #6) I still like this series of novellas about children who temporarily stumble into various fantasy worlds and later yearn to return there, but the past few volumes have been a little underwhelming. I think the format tends to work best …
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Book #164 of 2020: Middlegame by Seanan McGuire I have mixed feelings about this story of psychic twins, separated at birth, who nevertheless find each other via telepathy and end up forging an unshakable bond. I like the protagonists themselves, and the plot reads like classic Stephen King as they use their special talents to …
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Book #120 of 2020: Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #5) The fifth novella in this loose series about children longing to return to the fantasy worlds they once visited is most similar to the third, featuring a group of the kids again traveling to someone else’s magical realm to help resolve a …
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Book #129 of 2019: Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant Although this novella has an important message about vaccination and herd immunity, the characters and the plot feel pretty abbreviated. That’s partly an artifact of length, but author Mira Grant — who also publishes under the name Seanan McGuire — has been able …
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Book #80 of 2019: A People’s Future of the United States edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams I expected to really love this anthology, based on its foreword and stated goal of bringing a Howard Zinn recentering of marginalized perspectives to the world of tomorrow. The authors and characters include women, LGBTQ people, …
Book #53 of 2019: In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #4) I’ve generally enjoyed this series of novellas about children longing to escape back to other realms, but this latest installment doesn’t quite carry the same magic for me. I feel as though author Seanan McGuire never really makes the case for …
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Book #36 of 2019: Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #3) I always worry that these novellas about children who miss their adopted fantasylands are going to get formulaic and stale, but somehow author Seanan McGuire keeps coming up with new variations that I find endlessly enchanting. I’m not sure if this …
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