Seanan McGuire has written some cracking books that I have loved. We first discovered Seanan at The Wyrmberg through our then local library. Discount Armageddon was on the scifi and fantasy spinner, look cool, fun and Buffyesque.
It’s the first of the Incryptid series, which we enjoyed so much we bought our own copy. However, we’re really struggling to get our hands on the second book. Highly recommend.
The Wayward Children series is a collection of novellas looking at the children who fall into other worlds. They are beautiful little books, with heart breaking stories, characters and romances. I’ve slowly been picking the series up, online because they are never on the shelves in my local bookshops, and I’ve just had book three drop through my letterbox.
I’m not going to spoil any of these books for you, but I will tell you how they make me feel.
I grew up reading Portal Fantasy as a little girl; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the first book a remember reading outside of the school reading scheme at the age of 7. I often dreamt of escaping to another world. So when I heard about this series through Seanan’s twitter, I knew they were written for me.
The Wayward Children are for everyone who has ever felt lost, in the wrong place, body, or family. They are magically dark; these worlds are not everything that those magical tales told you. the darkness is always close. Our characters have to discover who they are, they grow and change and become stronger, or weaker for their experiences. You are never quite sure if things are going to end well, or end at all.
The first book, Every Heart a Doorway, deals with what happens when you get back, and unlike Alice, can’t cope with home any more. You don’t fit in any more. What happens then? How do you adapt to reality that no longer accepts you? The way Seanan writes about feeling an outsider, hurt and broken, is painful at times, and I often find I’m on the verge of tears (I know, I’m a softie but I really understood how her characters felt) Coming back home often doesn’t give happily ever afters in the Wayward Children’s world.
The series feels like it’s own fairy tales; they have that element of uncertainly, will the heroes survive to the last page? Do you want them to go back home? Characters are changed, allowed to be who they really are without the forced expectations from family or society. And rather than a moral on how to behave, The Wayward Children are about you. Finding the heart of you.
And I love them.
Happy reading!
Books At The Wyrmberg 
This is a series I’ve really been intending on reading for a long time and it just sounds so amazing!
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