I've had an absolute blast working through Seanan McGuire's 'Wayward Children' books this year in the run-up to her appearance as our Author GoH at CoKoCon 2023. They're all excellent and have affected me in different ways. Even as a long-standing fan of McGuire's longer running series, the Toby Daye and InCryptid books, 'Every Heart a Doorway' completely blew me away. It awed me, an impeccably simple concept that nobody else had ever figured out extrapolated with such style that it's effortlessly prompted seven sequels and counting. I've reviewed six but don't have 'Lost in the Moment and Found' to hand, so I'll take the opportunity to talk about 'Be Sure'.

The one problem with the 'Wayward Children' books is that they've been generally available only as e-books or perhaps expensive trade paperbacks, given that they're all novellas rather than full length novels. That's fine and I pulled out my Amazon Fire to read them, but I much prefer to read physical books and I like the fringe benefits of getting them signed and placing them on shelves. I therefore applaud the publication of 'Be Sure', which collates the first three novellas in the series, 'Every Heart a Doorway', 'Down Among the Sticks and Bones' and 'Beneath the Sugar Sky'.

I've reviewed all three of those individually, so I won't dive too deeply into them. Let's just explain the basic concept of the series, which is doors. Certain children who feel different enough from the world around them might, one crucial day, see a door where there shouldn't be a door and they find themselves opening it. It's going to take them somewhere else, a fantasy world that's more like a home to them than the one they were born into; but before it does it always gives them the chance to say no. Are you sure, it asks them, and, if they are, then it'll take them home for a while.

If this sounds like heaven to you, then this series is definitely a must-read for you, but let me point out that there's a catch. Every one of the characters in this series has been through their own door but they've all come back, whether by their own choice or more often not. Now they're even more out of place and they know what it feels like to be home, so they're constantly tortured by the fact that they're not there anymore. Their families tend to want the kids they thought they had rather than the ones they have, especially now as they've grown, often over years, and become their own selves. And so those parents deliver them to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, as close to a central location as the series has.

'Every Heart a Doorway' is an introduction to this series, to many of its principal characters and to Miss West's home, if not home as close to it as they have now and also a sort of base of operations, a sanctuary and a sacred space to mourn their loss. The lead in this one is Nancy, who's asexual but not aromantic and had been a living statue in the Halls of the Dead, but we also meet Sumi, Kade and a crucial pair to the next book, Jack and Jill. They're important in 'Every Heart a Doorway' but central in 'Down Among the Sticks and Bones', which is their story, after they go through their door to the Moors, Jill becomes the daughter of a vampire and Jack a mad scientist in a windmill.

One of the joys and the curses of this series is that there are so many stories to tell and McGuire is restricted, for the most part, to tell one at a time, so it jumps around. After reading 'Every Heart a Doorway', I knew with every fibre of my being that I wanted to keep going but I thought I wanted a direct sequel. I didn't, because 'Down Among the Sticks and Bones' was an excellent choice for the second book in the series. It slows the big picture down and focuses in on a small one, fleshing out a couple of fascinating characters and giving us their back story.

That's a dark story, as you might imagine with vampires and mad scientists, but it's the right story for those characters. However, the "students" at Miss West's are as varied as you can comfortably imagine and, while others are also dark, that's far from an exclusive attribute and Sumi isn't even close to darkness. She went to a nonsense world called Confection, where everything is built out of something sweet and everywhere can be reached in a day, but she was exiled back to our world. At the risk of throwing out a spoiler, she's dead before 'Beneath the Sugar Sky' begins, but given that she hasn't had kids and yet her daughter shows up to take her home to fulfil a prophecy, dead has less permanence than we might be used to. And so back she goes to overthrow the Queen of Cakes.

Every novella in this series is worth reading, because McGuire's prose is fluid and joyous and they all explore themes of diversity and belonging, which are so achingly potent here that the emotion in these books is often palpable. If you've ever been different, you'll feel at home here among the characters who share your distance from the norm if not your particular differences. However, it seems fair to say that your reaction to each individual book may vary depending on how close you might feel to its characters and the worlds behind the doors that they call home.

For instance, my least favourite thus far is 'Across the Green Grass Fields', because, to dive into an inappropriate stereotype, it's going to play best to girls who like horses. And that's not me, so I'm less affected by that book than others. However, it's just as capable a novel and it's surely going to be the favourite for readers who are girls who like horses or at least much closer to that than I am. My favourite, beyond the first, which is likely to always be the best, may be 'Come Tumbling Down', an explicit sequel to 'Down Among the Sticks and Bones', because so much of it speaks to me, but it may be your least favourite because it doesn't to you. The beauty about diversity is that we're all different, even if we share commonalities.

And that's a lead into suggesting that the three novellas in 'Be Sure' make both an appropriate set and awkward bedfellows. Of course, they make sense to appear together because they're the first three books in the series and each book adds grounding for the next to benefit from. It's far from essential that you read them in order, though you really should start with 'Every Heart a Doorway' and some books rely more on your knowledge of what's gone before than others. They're all firmly linked by the themes running through them too.

However, these three are very different in tone and feel. 'Every Heart a Doorway' is a beginning, a glorious introduction, a welcome home to those of us who might see this series as the world on the other side of our door, a world where we have a place to be truly accepted. 'Down Among the Sticks and Bones' is darkness and struggle, rules and balance, a sense of timelessness. And 'Beneath the Sugar Sky' is almost its opposite, bright and pink, chaos and rebirth, flippancy and change. Oh, and that holds true for its characters too. Jack and Sumi are as far from each other as can be imagined, but they may well be my favourite two characters from the series.

And that's just one more reason to pick up this book, devour it, let it camp out in your brain, and come to CoKoCon to get it signed. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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