Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Review | Be Sure by Seanan McGuire

Source: review copy provided by publisher. This is a review of my reading experience.


Where it all began―the first three books in Seanan McGuire's multi-Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Wayward Children series.

Join the students of Eleanor West, and jump through doors into worlds both dangerous and extraordinary.

Book 1: Every Heart a Doorway
Book 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Book 3: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Meet Nancy, cast out of her world by the Lord of the Dead; Jack and Jill, each adopted by a monster of the Moors; Sumi and her impossible daughter, Rini.

Three worlds, three adventures, three sets of lives destined to intersect.

Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations / No Visitors / No Quests

But quests are what these children do best...
Be Sure collects the first three books of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. The Wayward Children series is one of my absolute favorite series.

In the Wayward Children books, the characters find a door into another world but are eventually forced to go back home. These children struggle to cope and often wind up at the school for wayward children. Some books are set in another world and some are set at school.

If you haven't started reading the Wayward Children books, Be Sure is such a great way to start! Here are some of my non-spoiler thoughts on the books included in Be Sure:

Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway is a perfect introduction to this universe and what it's like to be a wayward kid who has gone through a portal to another world and forced to come back to the life they left behind. I love the magnitude of what Every Heart a Doorway spells out for these characters. There's an imaginative quality to Every Heart a Doorway, but it's also horror adjacent and should appeal to a wide range of genre readers.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Down Among the Sticks and Bones tells the backstory of two characters we meet in Every Heart a Doorway. Down Among the Sticks and Bones is a dark story in the dark world of the Moors, but the true beauty of Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the portrayal of gender roles. It's so heartbreakingly relatable.

Beneath the Sugar Sky

In Beneath the Sugar Sky we meet a brand-new character and head into a brand-new world, but we start our adventure at the school for Wayward Children with characters we already know and a problem we are sort of already familiar with. While there is still darkness in this volume, Beneath the Sugar Sky shows us just how different these worlds can be.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

2 comments:

  1. I've only read a couple of her books but I like them and this one sounds pretty good too.

    ReplyDelete

 
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