BOOK REVIEWS
The Wayward Children series
by Seanan McGuire
Every year, somewhere in the world, children vanish, sometimes never to be seen again. Imagine these children weren't abducted, or trafficked, or murdered; that they didn't run away from home to a miserable existence living on the streets. Instead, they slipped through doorways into other worlds.
Such doorways, and such alternative worlds, are a staple ingredient of children's books - whether it's stepping through the back of a wardrobe into a snow-covered Narnia, falling through a mirror or down a rabbit hole into a world run by playing cards or chess pieces, slitting the skin of this world with a subtle knife that opens a gash into an adjoining world, climbing a magic faraway tree to visit the lands that visit its topmost branches, or having your entire house carried by a tornado to land on a wicked witch. Anyone who has heard, read or seen films of children's stories knows about 'other worlds'.
Imagine what such worlds might really be like, their wonders and their horrors. Imagine what such worlds would do to the children who wander into them. If those children returned to our world after years away, either temporarily or permanently, how would they be changed? Would they fit back in with their families? Would they be desperate to return to the world they had to leave behind?
This is the idea behind Seanan McGuire's series. Eleanor West, a woman who herself outgrew the nonsense world in which she felt absolutely at home as a child, and is now waiting until she becomes senile enough to fit back in again so she can return, has set up a school for such 'wayward' children, and the novels tell the stories of some of the school's pupils and the worlds they have lost and found.
There are echoes here of Miss Peregrine's School For Peculiar Children, even occasional hints of Harry Potter, but the books don't feel derivative or unoriginal. This is mainly because McGuire has such a brilliant way with words. Her writing style is pacy, wry, moving and confident, her plots outrageous, darkly gothic, gripping, funny and tragic. They are aimed at a YA audience and deal with issues of gender-identity, body-image, difference and prejudice, love and hatred, bullying and jealousy and heroism and loyalty. These are things that are useful for young people to explore, but they are also fascinating for older readers, and her style and ideas are compelling for any reader who enjoys contemporary fantasy.
Highly recommended: *****
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