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kadtide's review
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement
Moderate: Kidnapping
Minor: Body horror and Abandonment
luckykosmos's review
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This book is in an interesting place. I think it's wholly inaccurate to call it middle grade - instead, it's for adults who are very familiar with the beats of classic middle grade. It's firmly a companion novel, so I can't recommend reading this without having read Middlegame - but if you have read Middlegame, it's a beautiful set piece within that world. Definitely going to read more of this, because I adore Middlegame and Seanan McGuire's writing kicks ass, but the book is a bit of a novelty otherwise.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement and Kidnapping
Minor: Animal cruelty
booksthatburn's review
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Over the Woodward Wall is a fairy tale with stranger hunger and feathers under its skin, unfolding a winding world in the overlap between strange and familiar.
The MC's are fantastic together and separately, they're explicitly very different people in a way that suits the narrative without feeling like they're caricatures of children. The way their relationship builds and is complicated felt natural and really, really good. They had an amount of emotional progression that fits the size of the story: enough to make this slice of their adventure help the grow as people, but not so much as to break narrative immersion. The secondary characters have ways of looking at the world which feel aching and sharp, for they are of the Up-and-Under which has its own rules to flaunt, follow, or break.
I love the narrative style, the narration speaks about the MCs in a ways that is explanatory without ever dismissing their sense of their own agency, even (or perhaps especially) when their sense is that they've lost their agency in some fundamental way. The cast of characters is surprisingly large for such a small book, but they're linked thematically in ways that make it easy to keep track of everyone and their role in the story. That archetypal repetition supports the style of this story as a kind of fairy tale. Not that it has fairies exactly, but that young protagonists go to some strange place and meet a variety of anthropomorphic creatures and a smattering of implicitly human but still rather strange characters. For established readers of this author, you'll love this whether you come to this book having read Middlegame and needing to delve into this companion novel, or you love the Wayward Children series and are ready for something with similar bones but a very different look. This book is a companion of sorts to Middlegame, but it can be read and enjoyed completely separately from it.
Overall I love this and I'm very excited for its eventual sequel.
The MC's are fantastic together and separately, they're explicitly very different people in a way that suits the narrative without feeling like they're caricatures of children. The way their relationship builds and is complicated felt natural and really, really good. They had an amount of emotional progression that fits the size of the story: enough to make this slice of their adventure help the grow as people, but not so much as to break narrative immersion. The secondary characters have ways of looking at the world which feel aching and sharp, for they are of the Up-and-Under which has its own rules to flaunt, follow, or break.
I love the narrative style, the narration speaks about the MCs in a ways that is explanatory without ever dismissing their sense of their own agency, even (or perhaps especially) when their sense is that they've lost their agency in some fundamental way. The cast of characters is surprisingly large for such a small book, but they're linked thematically in ways that make it easy to keep track of everyone and their role in the story. That archetypal repetition supports the style of this story as a kind of fairy tale. Not that it has fairies exactly, but that young protagonists go to some strange place and meet a variety of anthropomorphic creatures and a smattering of implicitly human but still rather strange characters. For established readers of this author, you'll love this whether you come to this book having read Middlegame and needing to delve into this companion novel, or you love the Wayward Children series and are ready for something with similar bones but a very different look. This book is a companion of sorts to Middlegame, but it can be read and enjoyed completely separately from it.
Overall I love this and I'm very excited for its eventual sequel.
Content Warnings
Minor: Confinement
CW for imprisonment, memory loss.keen's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
A beautiful story. Seanan McGuire captured me with her writing in Middlegame and proceeded to keep me ensnared in Over the Woodward Wall. I love how magical the writing and descriptions are. Both easy and difficult to understand, which I think is perfect when the main cast are children and they see the world as children do. McGuire has got me hooked on her writing and I can't wait to read more from her and more about the world she's created.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement
Moderate: Violence and Self harm
Minor: Animal cruelty, Kidnapping, Death, and Body shaming
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