Fantasy Novella Review: In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

In an Absent Dream is the fourth in Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children ongoing series of novellas, all of whom have been nominated for the Hugo Award (among other awards) and the first of which (Every Heart a Doorway) actually picked up the award.  McGuire is one of my favorite authors for her InCryptid and October Daye serieses, but I've had mixed reactions to this series: it's always well crafted, but the series' interesting format has to me resulted in me disliking the works more than I otherwise would.

The series features a world in which portal fantasies are real, and children who find themselves uncomfortable with reality find doors to fantasy worlds...only many come back, unable to find their Door again, and find themselves unable to cope and thus wind up at the school known as the Home for Wayward Children.  Every odd numbered book in the series takes place in the present, at the school at least to start, while every even numbered book (this one and Down Among the Sticks and Bones) has taken place in the past, showing the portal fantasy world of one particular kid at the school and how it all went wrong.

In my prior experience with this in an even numbered work, I found that it just didn't work: because I'd met these characters before in the prior novella, I knew exactly how things were going to go, and it just felt slow and pointless.  But I'd actually really liked the third novella Beneath the Sugar Sky, so I was willing to give this second "even" novella a shot and to my surprise I liked it a lot.

More after the jump:

Quick Plot Summary:  Lundy was a bookish young girl, daughter of the local school principal.  The other kids, fearing her ratting them out to her dad, avoided her and she grew up without friends, and only siblings too old or too young to be her real companions.  She followed the rules religiously, never getting into trouble, until one day she found a door to another world: The Goblin Market.

In The Goblin Market, everything must be paid for with something of equivalent value or else the world itself will punish you, turning you into an animal and making you lose your self.  And Lundy finds everything she didn't know she missed in this world: an actual friend, a parent-figure who seemed to care about her, and a world where everything happened according to a principle of fairness, where she didn't ever have to wonder "why".

But the Goblin Market may be fair, but it is also not a kind place, and Lundy will find herself leaving it and going back to the real world a few times as she grows up.  And eventually the Curfew of Age 18 will catch up to her, forcing Lundy to make a choice of which world she belongs in and whether she can live with that decision.....

Thoughts:  I hadn't touched this series since I read the 3rd novella last year around the same time for the same reasons (its nomination), and its main protagonist Lundy wasn't in that novella (she was only in the first novella, for reasons that are apparent if you read that one).  The result of this was that I'd honestly forgotten Lundy's story in the first novella, so everything about this one except the concept of the Doors and whatnot was new to me: I knew it goes wrong somehow and that Lundy winds up at the school, but that's about it.  This is very different from how I went into the 2nd novella, which I disliked because I already knew the story.

Perhaps as a result of that lack of foreknowledge, I found In An Absent Dream to be a truly strong novella, that is absolutely heartbreaking in the end (not really a spoiler due to how this series works).  Lundy is a girl it is incredibly easy to empathize with, and the world of the Goblin Market is so appealing, a world of utter fairness, that its easy for the reader to wish they were there instead of here themselves.  McGuire pulls a trick on us with that actually, with the worst parts of Lundy's experiences in the Market occurring entirely off page, and the one portion of the story that you'd expect to turn unbearable, in which a friendship is threatened, takes a twist for the better instead and makes your heart warm for a moment.  And this trick makes you feel so much for Lundy.....so that when the inevitable end comes you just feel devastated - which is a tremendous feat of writing.

I may even read the 5th novella before the next Hugo Nomination period after two installments I liked so much.  But I suspect it'll be nominated just like this one was, and well this one has earned its nomination for sure.