Rejected from Narnia... Every Heart a Doorway

I think most fantasy readers have a moment when they truly grasp how horrifying the end of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is. 

As children, it's disappointing to see our heroes become kings and queens and then return to ordinary WW2 England, without a faun in sight. As adults... well.... who hasn't been horrified at the idea of them being thrust back into their pre-pubescent bodies? Not to mention losing all of their friends and having at least a decade of their life vanish? I bet King Edmund was in the midst of some complex trade deal he was actually hoping to pull off before being dumped back to the land of rationed sweets. 

He - the boy who betrayed his whole family - eventually gets to go on some more Aslanian adventures. Not so poor Susan, who fails the Narnia personality test off-screen, for the crime of, I dunno, being too girly. The land of Christian allegories is actually quite judgey...who'd have thunk it?

So what has this rant got to do with Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire? 

The Home for Wayward Children is a place for children like the Pevensies (not to mention the Alices and Wendys and Dorothys) who found a doorway to a world of wonder, only to be returned home at the end of the adventure and expected to carry on as normal.

Our main character, Nancy, spent decades as a handmaiden in the world of Death, described as the Underworld if it were painted by Waterhouse. At the home, she meets Sumi (from a whimsical but dark Candyland), Kade (a trans boy rejected from Farieland when they realised he wasn't the little girl they wanted), and twins Jack and Jill, who escaped their oppressive home into a gothic world of mad scientists and vampires. 

The adults at the school offer emotional support but conflicting views. The headmistress can no longer return to her world of whimsy because her adult brain can't handle it anymore - she still hopes to get old and senile enough to return. Their therapist offers a more realistic view - their odds of returning aren't impossible, but they are the same as being hit by lightning a second time. 

A core of sadness runs through this story, which builds on the inherent darkness of those famous books, Everyone here is the hero of their own story, rendered completely mundane. They aren't special anymore, but one of hundreds of kids just like them. They sit around in group sessions snarking at the lameness of other people's magic worlds and eagerly talking of the day they'll find their way back to their own.

The book pulls no punches when it comes to the demographics of the teens. They are mainly girls - girls being more easily overlooked. Nearly all have unhappy homes, or ones they don't fit into. many are queer. Nancy is Asexual, Kade is Trans, Jack and Jill were both forced into fixed roles by their parents, and whimsical Sumi had a regimented upbringing. They all found a world that allowed them to be themselves... and then they were kicked out of it.

The actual plot of the story focuses on murders at the home, and while I enjoy a good murder story, it does feel a little tacked on. Considering the shortness of the book, I would have preferred time for the concept to breathe a little more. I think there could have been more appropriate conflicts for the main character - ones that truly made her question her beliefs. 

Nancy does vaguely realise that she could build a good life here in this world... but it's not a very serious thought, considering that she's spent her time at the school hunting a murderer and watching friends die brutally. How much better might it have been for the earthly school to offer as much of a future as her magic world?

The end is something many people didn't like, judging by reviews. It worked for me, because it wasn't satisfying. It's the exact inverse of the usual endings to these stories, in which the character leaves the magical world you've come to love in exchange for the easy and familiar, and you are expected to take that as a happy ending. It's as painful as Wonderland and Oz being dismissed as a dream.

I still found this a magical book, one that I read in a single sitting, and so the above isn't a dealbreaker for me. There are another seven books in the series, and I will be reading them as soon as I can find the time to escape my own mundane reality...