Sweet dreams are made of this: an "In an Absent Dream" review
Following a series you love is an absolute delight. Sometimes you get into one all at once, a consuming haze when all the books are available and read. Sometimes you pick up the first book, love it, and have to wait a year until the next one. Sometimes you read what's available, get caught up, and then time has to pass before you can continue.
That was the case for Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. After hearing great things about Every Heart a Doorway for a few years, I found it at one of my local libraries last summer and pretty much fell in love with it after the first two chapters. Then I grabbed the next two entries and enjoyed them even more. Unfortunately, half a year passed before this fourth title released, and I didn't pick it up until almost a year after reading the third title in the series. Despite that, I was ecstatic to find this at the library I found the first novel in and wanted to start right away. The fact that this was a prequel to the first book from a character who was introduced there (something happens to her, but I won't say because spoilers) intrigued me. Discovering the world she traveled to was of immediate interest to me, so I dove into this without hesitation.
And of course I loved it. In an Absent Dream is another spectacular addition to this series. McGuire captivates with stunning writing that's reminiscent of the best fairy tales, creating a story that's vicious and wonderful, heartbreaking and uplifting. Her characters are well-realized and captured from many perspectives within the tale, allowing a reader to get as much depth from them as possible. And there's just so much fun to be had. It's so easy to get sucked into the experiences of these kids, and no matter the trials and tribulations they go through in these beautifully tragic and well thought out worlds, there's always a lesson, always a moral, always a delighted smile to be had. It's a truly breathtaking novella, one that will resonant with adults and younger readers alike.
Katherine Lundy is eight years old when she finds a mysterious tree on a walk home from school. It's the 1960's, an era where women are expected to be housewives and hold little weight compared to the men ruling everything. Katherine, a precocious bookworm who lives in content isolation due to her dad's position as elementary school principal, isn't about that life. She'd rather be lost in a Trixie Belden mystery than have to deal with the scorn of classmates and the rigidity of her family. On that fateful day, Katherine travels through the tree into a world unlike anything she's read. A market makes up the town, a place where humanoid creatures roam and wares of all kinds are sold. She meets a girl there, an owl-eyed mischief-maker by the name of Moon, and Moon leads Katherine to the house of the wise old heart of the Goblin Market, an woman by the name of the Archivist. From there, Katherine discovers her father came to the Goblin Market before her when the Archivist says that no one goes by their given name here. Katherine decides to take her last name, and the rules of the Market are laid out to her: everything she gives must be in fair value to what she receives. No exceptions, no excuses. If too many debts are stacked up, the patrons of the Market become birds. But eight-year-old Lundy won't be aware of that until much later, after meat pies and lost friends and several trips in and out of the world.
Each time Lundy returns, she vows to become part of the Goblin Market for life. But with harsher rules battling against her desire to really learn about her family, what will she choose: the world she feels like she's always known, or the world she's never given herself the chance to discover?
Much like the second book in the series, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, In an Absent Dream can be read on its own. However, a reader's understanding may be benefited from reading Every Heart a Doorway, where Lundy was first introduced as Eleanor West's sidekick, a woman aging in reverse. But this is not completely necessary; as a standalone, the information acquired from the first novel doesn't need to reinforce the story here. At its heart, this book is simply the tale of a girl discovering a place where she feels like she belongs, one she's unwilling to lose until she does. It's incredibly effective.
McGuire's effectiveness at delivering this type of fairy tale not only comes through as a story; her characters shine just as much. Lundy is the kind of protagonist that speaks to so many young women out there, someone battling against strict expectations to be the true version of herself she wants to be. McGuire's incredibly detailed writing from all perspectives paints Lundy as a complex character. Her second grade teacher thinks she's a good student despite her accidental wielding of power, her father sees a girl like the child he was, troubled by what she has discovered, her little sister sees someone she doesn't know and is desperate to get a hold of, and her mother sees a selfish girl who isn't satisfied by the love the family believes to be giving her. But to Lundy, she's merely who she is, and there's something so eloquent and beautiful about that thought.
The people of the Goblin Market feel the same way. The Archivist's love of reading and her gentle rule-teaching that quickly turns darker as Lundy gets older, Moon's mischievous nature concealing such a grave and heartbroken soul, and even Vincent, the man behind all the meat pies and fruit pies Lundy trades her school supplies for have just as many layers as Lundy does. The adventures that occur in this world (death, laundry-washing by hand, transforming, and bargaining) are just as wonderful, all shaping Lundy into the woman she becomes. Even when she returns to the human world, it's hard to forget all that's happened, and although some of those critical events are never shown, the profound effects linger just as vividly in a reader's mind as they do in Lundy's. It took my breath away.
And the writing. What more is there to say that I haven't mentioned in past reviews? McGuire has such a gift with words. In my creative writing class last semester, an emphasis was put on cutting adverbs from a piece altogether. But for McGuire, they're necessary, adding onto the whimsy and fascination of this kind of tale. The narrative outside of the magical highs and lows of being swept away by something extraordinary is one of keen hindsight, a narrator aware of the constraints Lundy faces and the problems she will run into that she is unaware of. It meditates on that reminiscing with beautiful descriptions, capturing the essence of the Goblin Market and the other environments that pop up throughout this book. Each image is something a reader can hold onto until the absolute breaking point, much like Lundy, and it's definitely something to be cherished.
Seanan McGuire's In an Absent Dream is truly something to behold. The fourth addition to the Wayward Children series is just as beautiful as its predecessors, painting another adventure in grand strokes that still capture the delicacy, the brittle edges the fairy tales of youth hid away. They deserve to be brought to life, to show the vastness underneath what was once thought to be merely happy. There's dark magic hiding under the cracks, complex characters that aren't merely happy-go-lucky, and consequences to actions that, as a kid, we don't question twice until it's too late. It's an absolutely mesmerizing novella in a series that never fails to take my breath away. Whether you pick up this story or the entire series, you're in good hands.