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penguin428's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
mdelao630's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
coni_booklover's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
es153's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
fast-paced
4.0
CHILDREN HAVE ALWAYS tumbled down rabbit holes, fallen through mirrors, been swept away by unseasonal floods or carried off by tornadoes. Children have always traveled, and because they are young and bright and full of contradictions, they haven't always restricted their travel to the possible. Adulthood brings limitations like gravity and linear space and the idea that bedtime is a real thing, and not an artificially imposed curfew. Adults can still tumble down rabbit holes and into enchanted wardrobes, but it happens less and less with every year they live. Maybe this is a natural consequence of living in a world where being careful is a necessary survival trait, where logic wears away the potential for something bigger and better than the obvious.
For some, this is a blessing. For some, it is easy to put the adventures and the impossibilities of the past behind them, choosing sanity and predictability and the world that they were born to be a part of.
For others ...
For others, the lure of a world where they fit is too great to escape, and they will spend the rest of their lives rattling at windows and peering at locks, trying to find the way home. Trying to find the one perfect door that can take them there, despite everything, despite the unlikeliness of it all.
They can be hard for their families to understand, those returned, used-up miracle children. They sound like liars to people who have never had a doorway of their own. They sound like dreamers. They sound ... unwell, to the charitable, and simply sick to the cruel. Something must be done.
It's going to be okay."
Cora took a deep breath, eyeing him. "You really think so?"
"No," he said baldly. "It's never okay. But I told myself that every night when I was in Prism. I told myself that every morning when I woke up, still in Prism. And I got through. Sometimes that's all you can do. Just keep getting through until you don't have to do it anymore, however much time that takes, however difficult it is."
"That sounds . . " Cora paused. "Actually, that sounds really nice. I'm not that good at lying to myself."
Everyone who wound up at Eleanor West's School- everyone who found a door understood what it was to spend a lifetime waiting for something that other people wouldn't necessarily understand. Not because they were better than other people and not because they were worse, but because they had a need trapped somewhere in their bones, gnawing constantly, trying to get out.
knasentjej's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Jag älskar den här serien. I denna bok får vi träffa några gamla bekanta, men också nya bekantskaper. Det blir äventyr för att rädda en stackars flicka som håller på att tyna bort för att hennes mamma aldrig blev hennes mamma. Ja, berättelsen är så galen som den låter och så mycket mer.
pochivka_'s review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
bookph1le's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars
This rating is kind of tricky for me. I adore this series and cannot overstate how important I think it is. Unlike most YA, this series and author do not feel the need to stick to the tropes that define the genre, and I find that *super* refreshing. As someone who has mostly stopped reading YA sci-fi because I get so tired of seeing the same tropes repeated over and over, it's a delight to find a series that isn't at all concerned with sticking to genre conventions.
Now, my problems with this book stem from something I'm starting to notice about McGuire's books, now that I've read a fair number of them, including one of her non-Wayward books: sometimes her plots are lacking. This book didn't work for me because the plot itself felt too paint-by-numbers. It was a typical hero's journey kind of plot, and I felt like the story was checking off items on an outline as it went. I didn't find Cora's, Kade's, Nadya's, Christopher's, and Rini's efforts to restore balance to Confection particularly compelling. It was as if the characters had a to-do list and each time they completed one chore they moved along to the next.
However, McGuire's imagination is truly prodigious and breathtaking, and I was just awed throughout so many passages in this book. Reading about Confection is pretty delightful, and McGuire describes it in such a compelling way. Yet I felt that this was part of the problem with this particular novella. It was as if McGuire had this gorgeous, creative, just out there world she wanted to play around in but didn't particularly want to worry about the plot. This is where I find some weakness with her works. To me, she's at her best when she's focused on the personal, such as in the superb second installment in this series, which is really all about the bonds between sisters and how those bonds can become twisted. When McGuire's books move into the "big" plots, they tend to fall apart for me.
And that's a shame, because the fat girl representation here was nothing short of marvelous and much-needed. Had the entire story focused on this aspect of things, I would have been sold. Indeed, I thought this novella was strongest when it was deconstructing the discrimination and judgement with which Cora has had to cope her entire life. Sometimes it's hard for me to understand why these wayward children want back into their odd and dangerous worlds, but it wasn't hard for me to understand why Cora wanted to go back. Instead of being judged solely on what her body looks like, she found a world that valued her for who she is and what she can do. I don't see how any fat person can't appreciate that notion--or even how most women, thin or fat, could fail to appreciate it. The book is a searing indictment of how horribly Cora is treated by a society that doesn't care about truly understanding fatness because it's too busy blaming fat people for all its problems. I was thrilled when it felt like Cora was going to be the hero of this story *because* of her fatness but didn't entirely believe the book let her live up to that potential, which was a shame. Still, I was happier than I can say that Cora's weight was never a problem or an impediment to her in the story. I also really, really liked that McGuire took aim at the idea of weight loss as a magical solution to all life's problems. She's not peddling faux body positivity here, she's methodically deconstructing everything that's wrong with the way society thinks about fat people, our cult of weight loss worshiping, and the fundamental misunderstandings about the effects of fatness on health.
I will never stop lauding McGuire for her book's representation. The Wayward series may seem like the poster child for inclusiveness, but her Into the Drowning Deep has every bit as much representation as this series. McGuire gets that people are people, that no matter what race they are, no matter which gender they identify with, no matter their sexual preference, people are human beings. That humanity is so baked into her writing, and even when she's writing about characters who are ostensibly evil, her work is empathetic. The Queen of Cakes is the villain here, but is she? Isn't she a product of her environment? At what point do we have to absolve people of some of the responsibility for what they do because they're products of their environments? McGuire isn't interested in easy or pat answers to those questions and neither am I.
So, yeah, this book was a bit of a letdown to me, especially because I found Down Among the Sticks and Bones to be such an astonishing moving and gorgeous work. But I won't quit reading McGuire and, indeed, am looking very forward to the fourth book in this series, precisely because she's an author who refuses to populate her books with stock characters and who insists on portraying everything in shades of gray. If her plots always meshed with her prodigious abilities at characterization and exploring the larger implications of societal issues, she'd be about as perfect as an author can be.
This rating is kind of tricky for me. I adore this series and cannot overstate how important I think it is. Unlike most YA, this series and author do not feel the need to stick to the tropes that define the genre, and I find that *super* refreshing. As someone who has mostly stopped reading YA sci-fi because I get so tired of seeing the same tropes repeated over and over, it's a delight to find a series that isn't at all concerned with sticking to genre conventions.
Now, my problems with this book stem from something I'm starting to notice about McGuire's books, now that I've read a fair number of them, including one of her non-Wayward books: sometimes her plots are lacking. This book didn't work for me because the plot itself felt too paint-by-numbers. It was a typical hero's journey kind of plot, and I felt like the story was checking off items on an outline as it went. I didn't find Cora's, Kade's, Nadya's, Christopher's, and Rini's efforts to restore balance to Confection particularly compelling. It was as if the characters had a to-do list and each time they completed one chore they moved along to the next.
However, McGuire's imagination is truly prodigious and breathtaking, and I was just awed throughout so many passages in this book. Reading about Confection is pretty delightful, and McGuire describes it in such a compelling way. Yet I felt that this was part of the problem with this particular novella. It was as if McGuire had this gorgeous, creative, just out there world she wanted to play around in but didn't particularly want to worry about the plot. This is where I find some weakness with her works. To me, she's at her best when she's focused on the personal, such as in the superb second installment in this series, which is really all about the bonds between sisters and how those bonds can become twisted. When McGuire's books move into the "big" plots, they tend to fall apart for me.
And that's a shame, because the fat girl representation here was nothing short of marvelous and much-needed. Had the entire story focused on this aspect of things, I would have been sold. Indeed, I thought this novella was strongest when it was deconstructing the discrimination and judgement with which Cora has had to cope her entire life. Sometimes it's hard for me to understand why these wayward children want back into their odd and dangerous worlds, but it wasn't hard for me to understand why Cora wanted to go back. Instead of being judged solely on what her body looks like, she found a world that valued her for who she is and what she can do. I don't see how any fat person can't appreciate that notion--or even how most women, thin or fat, could fail to appreciate it. The book is a searing indictment of how horribly Cora is treated by a society that doesn't care about truly understanding fatness because it's too busy blaming fat people for all its problems. I was thrilled when it felt like Cora was going to be the hero of this story *because* of her fatness but didn't entirely believe the book let her live up to that potential, which was a shame. Still, I was happier than I can say that Cora's weight was never a problem or an impediment to her in the story. I also really, really liked that McGuire took aim at the idea of weight loss as a magical solution to all life's problems. She's not peddling faux body positivity here, she's methodically deconstructing everything that's wrong with the way society thinks about fat people, our cult of weight loss worshiping, and the fundamental misunderstandings about the effects of fatness on health.
I will never stop lauding McGuire for her book's representation. The Wayward series may seem like the poster child for inclusiveness, but her Into the Drowning Deep has every bit as much representation as this series. McGuire gets that people are people, that no matter what race they are, no matter which gender they identify with, no matter their sexual preference, people are human beings. That humanity is so baked into her writing, and even when she's writing about characters who are ostensibly evil, her work is empathetic. The Queen of Cakes is the villain here, but is she? Isn't she a product of her environment? At what point do we have to absolve people of some of the responsibility for what they do because they're products of their environments? McGuire isn't interested in easy or pat answers to those questions and neither am I.
So, yeah, this book was a bit of a letdown to me, especially because I found Down Among the Sticks and Bones to be such an astonishing moving and gorgeous work. But I won't quit reading McGuire and, indeed, am looking very forward to the fourth book in this series, precisely because she's an author who refuses to populate her books with stock characters and who insists on portraying everything in shades of gray. If her plots always meshed with her prodigious abilities at characterization and exploring the larger implications of societal issues, she'd be about as perfect as an author can be.
zkoch's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
emmacraig's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
pznightingale's review against another edition
3.0
Listen. These books are so popular. And I can tell why, I really can. I am borderline obsessed with the premise of this series. I am so disappointed that they aren't just a little better. So much of it is so horribly cringe-inducing. Here's my impression of one of the early scenes in this book:
Cora ran around, thinking about how she was fat, until she collided with Christopher.
"I'm fat!" she cried, her unusually colored hair and eyes flailing.
"I know what you mean," Christopher said with a sage nod as he picked himself up from the ground. "I'm Mexican."
Why can't these people introduce themselves without declaring whichever personality trait the author decides is the most outside the norm for them? Why does the fat character have to think about how fat she is every time we spend a second in her POV? Why can't there be a little bit of subtlety here? I want to hear more about these characters in a meaningful way. I'm so disappointed that these are so close to good, but they're just not that good.
Also am I on my own in wondering if it's totally necessary that these teenaged characters keep having deadpan, clinical discussions about their genitals? Why don't I get these books?
Cora ran around, thinking about how she was fat, until she collided with Christopher.
"I'm fat!" she cried, her unusually colored hair and eyes flailing.
"I know what you mean," Christopher said with a sage nod as he picked himself up from the ground. "I'm Mexican."
Why can't these people introduce themselves without declaring whichever personality trait the author decides is the most outside the norm for them? Why does the fat character have to think about how fat she is every time we spend a second in her POV? Why can't there be a little bit of subtlety here? I want to hear more about these characters in a meaningful way. I'm so disappointed that these are so close to good, but they're just not that good.
Also am I on my own in wondering if it's totally necessary that these teenaged characters keep having deadpan, clinical discussions about their genitals? Why don't I get these books?