Every Heart a Doorway
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4.1 • 312 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Hugo Award, Hugo Award for Best Series, Alex Award, Locus Award, and Nebula Award
Nominated for the World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award, and Tiptree Honor List
"A mini-masterpiece of portal fantasy — a jewel of a book that deserves to be shelved with Lewis Carroll's and C. S. Lewis' classics" —NPR
New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire presents a fresh take on the portal fantasy genre that blends Alice in Wonderland, The Magicians, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests
Children 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 things.
No matter the cost.
The Wayward Children Series
Book 1: Every Heart a Doorway
Book 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Book 3: Beneath the Sugar Sky
Book 4: In an Absent Dream
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Fantasy books are full of kids discovering incredible new worlds after falling down rabbit holes or wandering into wardrobes. But what happens after they come back to the real world? According to the first novella in fantasy writer Seanan McGuire’s warmhearted and entertaining series, they’re carted off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. The book follows a plucky young character named Nancy, who leads the investigation when her Wayward peers start turning up dead. Luckily, Nancy—whose own magical journey was to the Underworld—is perfectly suited to hunt down the killer. Don’t be surprised if you start looking at your surroundings a little differently—the next secret doorway could be just around the corner.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A boarding school offering sanctuary for very special teens is threatened by a series of murders in McGuire's darkly hypnotic standalone fantasy. Eleanor West has spent her life helping kids who discover secret doors to beguiling worlds and long to return to them. When Nancy arrives at Eleanor's manor, unrest seems close behind. If only Nancy could return to the Halls of the Dead and the waiting arms of that dimension's lord, she could be happy, but first she'll have to help the others track down a killer who's taking something different from each victim. The students include twins called Jack and Jill; a boy who can speak to bones; and Sumi, Nancy's roommate, who comes from a world of nonsense and speaks in lilting, looping curlicues of words. McGuire (the October Daye series) puts her own inimitable spin on portal fantasy, adding horror elements to the mix, and her characters are strange and charming. Being different is all these kids have ever known, but as much as they pine for their other worlds, they ultimately find comfort in one another. This gothic charmer is a love letter to anyone who's ever felt out of place.
Customer Reviews
5 Stars
Loved this story. So much representation and commentary on gender roles in such a short story. Plus fantasy, different worlds and a murder mystery. I was thriving.
"This world is unforgiving and cruel to those it judges as even the slightest bit outside the norm."
"Because 'boys will be boys' is a self-fulfilling prophecy." said Lundy. "They're too loud, on the whole, to be easily misplaced or overlooked; when they disappear from the home, parents send search parties to dredge them out of swamps and drag them away from frog ponds. It's not innate.
It's learned. But it protects them from the doors, keeps them safe at home. Call it irony, if you like, but we spend so much time waiting for our boys to stray that they never have the opportunity. We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women."
"Their love wanted to fix her, and refused to see that she wasn't broken."
"You're nobody's rainbow.
You're nobody's princess.
You're nobody's doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you."
Really liked it
A very short little mystery, and I only figured it out shortly before the protagonists did.
I've read some of the short stories and this made me even more worried for one of the secondary/tertiary characters!
Captures that longing to belong somwhere
On a whim, I picked this up in audio because I wasn't sure when I'd get to it on the page. Given how late I am to the party, I'm aware that there's now an entire series of the "wayward children" stories, involving those who have gone through portals to another realm...and now can't find their way back. But this first story is less a classic portal fantasy than it is a classic murder mystery. And when all the inhabitants of the mysterious spooky mansion are more than a little odd, sorting out the suspects can be a problem.
I really enjoyed the worldbuilding behind McGuire's version of portal fantasy. And the protagonist captures the desperation and angst of being a Strange Child doomed never to find her way to the place she belongs. (Been there, though a different flavor of Strange.)