Seanan McGuire has three different series that are on a predictable release schedule: Septembers are for October Daye, May for InCryptid and January? Well, that’s saved for the Wayward Children novella series. As always, no quests allowed.
For anyone new to the series, the even releases are deeper dives into the story of one of the characters (usually someone we have met already, sometimes someone to be introduced soon) while the odds should be read in order and are part of a continuing storyline that always starts at the school.
Eleanor West’s boarding school is for children that found doorways to magical and dangerous worlds, guided by their own sets of rules and logic (or Nonsense), and have come back for whatever reason. The children at the school don’t fit back into their previous lives, and most desperately want back to their magic worlds, but temporarily left or were expelled for a myriad of reasons (whether it’s wanting to see an elderly grandmother one last time or something else).
In this novella, the friends face a unique situation: Nancy already found her door a second time after the very first novella in the series but she is back again because there is a danger in the Halls of the Dead. She is still Sure but she is also Sure she doesn’t actually want to join the ranks of the dead so turns to her friends at school to help solve the problem of the hungry and restless dead making the Halls inhospitable to the living statues.
The last novella released was maybe my least favorite of the series thus far – it just didn’t have the usual depth, and I usually prefer the even ones that closely explore one specific world so that was a bit of surprise. While this one wasn’t as impactful as some of the best in the series, I enjoyed it more than last year’s release but felt more like an interlude, a brief way to spend time with characters again. While it has a plot, it also much feels like a bridge, setting up certain situations and characters for later in the series.
Even within this, McGuire still explored some deeper ideas, both about what people need, what makes up being and existence, and within that, what a leader might owe his people and charges, and who serves whom.
