This is another installment of the Wayward Children series, and it’s another stand alone about one person’s trip through a mysterious door. (You can read about the first, second, and third books in the series at these links.) This time it’s Lundy, the counselor from Every Heart a Doorway who ages backwards. Her story is pretty tragic to be honest, but it has all of the charm of the rest of the series.
Lundy is a young girl who loves reading and finds a tree that has twisted itself into a door. She goes through and finds herself at the Goblin Market, which is run by strict rules concerning fair value and bartering amongst the inhabitants. Those that don’t fulfill their promises and don’t give fair value get slowly turned into birds. Giving fair value turns yourself back. Lundy meets Moon, a young child that’s already part bird, and the Archivist who becomes a surrogate mother and teacher. Lundy goes on an adventure, resulting in the death of one of her friends, and returns to her world devastated.
She goes back to the Goblin Market after experiencing some pretty bad misogyny from her teacher, and stays for a while. She has until her eighteenth birthday to decide which world she wants to stay in. She goes on more adventures, but wants to return to grab supplies and ends up being sent to a boarding school by her father who had also been to the Goblin Market and wants to keep Lundy in his world. She escapes, saves Moon from becoming a bird, and wants to stay in the Goblin Market, but also wants to say goodbye to her family. Her sister pulls her back in forcefully, enough that Lundy goes back and forth for a while, but eventually wants to put off her choice. She drinks a potion to make her stop aging, and ends up banished from the Goblin Market for messing with the rules. Eleanor then finds her and brings her to the school.
The story is pretty depressing to be honest. Lundy deals with heavy grief when her friend dies, and is kicked out of her home because she loved her sister. I kept expecting Moon to turn on her as well, their relationship goes through some rocky patches, but that ended up not happening, surprisingly enough. It is in fact the Archivist that is revealed to be the Market manifest who kicks her out, she is unhappy about it but has to do it anyways. So the rejection coming from a mother figure hurts even more.
The characters and the world building are the strong suit here. The questing and all that is entirely skipped over in a time jump, the book wants to focus on Lundy making the journey back and forth rather than the adventures she goes on. I did not hate that choice, although I could see McGuire being nervous about it. The book isn’t supposed to be exciting, it’s supposed to leave you in suspense and it does that really well.
Having said all that, I definitely don’t like these one off stories as much as Every Heart a Doorway or Beneath the Sugar Sky where the whole group of wayward kids is together. I hope that there’s more group adventures in store, apart from being more entertaining with a wide variety of characters, they also give more insight into the physics of all these worlds than the single journeys. The one offs though definitely have more material to feed them, you could write about every character’s journey that way. Group activities are harder to plan.
I’m excited to keep going with this series, I really like it
so far. Hopefully there’s more intriguing worlds left to explore!
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