Every Heart a Doorway is the story about portal fantasies I never knew I needed.
Title: Every Heart a Doorway
Written by Seanan McGuire
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Tor.com
Publication Date: April 5 2016
Hardcover: 173 pages
Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No QuestsChildren 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.
Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.
But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.
Stand alone or series: Book 1 in a new series
How did I get this book: Review Copy from the Publisher
Format (e- or p-): electronic copy
Review:
To find a door – a portal – and to cross it, as a child or young teenager: slipping through the shadows, through a wardrobe or a rabbit hole. To travel into fantasy lands and get lost into worlds that are magical, or twisted, or nonsensical, or logical, or wicked, virtuous, dark or light. To fall in love or be needed and to be accepted and to truly fit in for the first time in one’s life. Fairyland or Underworld, it doesn’t matter, every heart a doorway and all that – you go where you are wanted and needed. The door opens and you cross it.
Then you are kicked out. Because you are too old, or unsure. Or because you are no longer what they think you are. Arbitrary? Yes. Traumatic? Definitely. Would you want to go back? Absolutely. It’s home, after all.
This is the premise of Seanan McGuire’s marvellous novella Every Heart a Doorway. To every kid who crossed a portal and is kicked back there is that moment of what-happens-next and what-do-I-do-now. There are those who never want to go back, who just want to move on and forget. They find a way. But what happens to those who have been inexorably changed and want to go back? Who are just bidding their time hoping that their door will reopen one day?
They go to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. That’s where Nancy’s parents leave her one day (not knowing what the boarding school really is).
At the Home, Nancy meets other Wayward Children. She learns that there are High Logic or High Nonsense, Wicked or Virtuous worlds with flexible alignments and interchanges. And she waits. Nancy went to one of the Underworlds. Her parents think she was kidnapped (and in a way, she might have been) and just want her to fit it in this world, the world they say she belongs to, with its bright colours and cheerfulness and chaos. It doesn’t matter that she likes the stillness, the quiet, the strictness of the underworld she was in, where she was in control. A period of readjustment starts: Nancy is sure, 100% sure she wants to go back to her real home. But miss Eleanor – herself a lost child, with a door of her own – says not everybody is allowed to go back.
Then, a couple of gruesome murders throw everything up in the air. And the kids get together to solve the crimes. The whodunit is not especially difficult to solve but that is not really the point. Because that’s when the kids truly shine, showing their true selves, the selves that found their homes because of special reasons. There is a boy who talks to bones, they sing to him and he loves the bone princess waiting on the other side. I want to read that story and the story of every heart who found their doorway in this incredible, beautifully told novella.
There is darkness here. And struggle and trauma and fear and guilt. It fits: portal fantasies hide behind a façade of magic and beauty and often leave out the toll they leave behind and the hidden truths of what they really are.
Every Heart a Doorway is the story about portal fantasies I never knew I needed.
You’re nobody’s doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.
Rating: 8 – Excellent
6 Comments
Hannah H
April 18, 2016 at 3:48 pmWow, this sounds fantastic! This reminds me of Daryl Gregory’s absolutely wonderful novella “We are All Completely Fine,” which is about a support group for people who have all survived a horror story. (Actually, it’s where Gregory introduced Harrison Harrison of Harrison Squared, and although I liked H2, the novella is just on a different level.) I love Seanan McGuire’s work, and I will keep an eye out! Thank you for the review!
Kim Aippersbach
April 19, 2016 at 4:01 pmSo excited for this one! Thanks for the review. Good to know it lives up to that gorgeous cover and the wonderful premise.
Drew
April 25, 2016 at 6:46 pmI read this last week. The story overall is good. However, there is not much character depth and it feels a bit rushed.
Anonymous
May 20, 2016 at 2:41 pmI completely agree. It lacks character depth and could be a much longer book.
Wilma
May 31, 2016 at 4:07 amThat’s a smart way of thinnikg about it.
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