I liked Come Tumbling Down better than the previous installment of the Wayward Children series in terms of story, but I do think there was an over-emphasis on the concept of who’s the monster. Jack is back at the school but there’s something very wrong with her which if not fixed will definitely destroy her. This was the premise in the previews I’d seen and I have to admit I didn’t see that problem itself coming, although in hindsight it does suit their folkloric homeland of the Moors quite well. There’s a lot of time spent on explaining what happened, why it’s bad, and planning the trip back to the moors to put things right. Much of the crew is back too including Cade, Christopher, Sumi, and Cora. We do get a little more of Alexis as well, but she doesn’t get much more character, just more presence which is too bad because that could have been interesting.
Once in the Moors, there’s also the introduction of the Drowned Gods and their High Priest, which adds a Cthulu-esque element, and a new character who could definitely use some more development, especially considering the interest Sumi expresses in Gideon (the High Priest, who Jack says comes from a background kind of like their own). Mixing mythologies a little works, but I sort of wish there had been more time to explore some of the elements of the world of the Moors that was introduced.
Jack as the main character of the volume gets more focus, and she talks a lot to everyone about how she’s a scientist of the mad/monstrous variety, but one of the good ones. This in itself fits with some of the things previous novellas have set up about her, Jill, and the Moors, but it also develops the world mythology a little more, with the emphasis on the importance of lightening and reanimation ala Frankenstein, and the vampire vs mad scientist tradition, giving it a more focused background. That’s one of the cool things about this series, that if you know the general premise of a given world, then you can really fill in the blanks with as much head-canon as you want. The whole “I’m a monster too but not as bad as {insert current foe here” gets a little more attention than I feel it needs for this reason. It’s fine to say it, but the repetition gets old. It’s a good story in a good series that has at least one more episode which I hope the local library gets soon.
