Fantasy Novella Review: Over the Woodward Wall by A Deborah Baker

 


Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker

Over the Woodward Wall is a middle-grade novella with an odd backstory.  The story first featured as an in-universe book in Seanan McGuire's stand alone adult novel "Middlegame," as a Wizard of Oz-like story written as a coded guide to teach the fictional author Baker's disciples alchemy.  McGuire wrote snippets of the story for Middlegame and decided (with the Publisher) to eventually actually write the full story as its own stand alone middle-grade novel (Baker is of course, another of McGuire's pseudonyms here). 

So it's not surprising that the story is a fun middle grade tale of two different children going on an adventure trying to get home from a strange fantasy world, one which really will remind readers of both The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland quite a bit.  What is surprising is how incomplete the story is, with it just....ending and it begging for a sequel.  I can't imagine children reading this being satisfied as a result and can imagine them frustrated which just makes it weird, and while this is fun for adults, it won't be more than an interesting curiosity. 

More specifics after the jump.

Quick Plot Summary:  Zib and Avery are too kids who live on the same street in the same town who couldn't be more different.  Zib is wild and adventurous, coming from a family that isn't fully well off but is absolutely loving, if a bit careless with her;  Avery is orderly and stable, from a well off family, and is used to and enjoys stability and a well planned and ordered lifestyle.  The two go to different schools and would have never met....except for one day, when construction on their street causes them to walk together towards a strange wall...and over, where the two find a strange fantasy world filled with odd creatures, improbable beings, and impossible things, that will require the two to work together to survive, and to make it back to their ordinary lives in one piece.....

Thoughts:   So, Over the Woodward Wall will obviously invoke thoughts of The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland, to the surprise of no one who's read Middlegame.  You have the "Improbable Road" (a much funkier version of the Yellow Brick Road which comes to find you rather than guiding you anywhere), you have two Queens and Kings of various tarot-like names like the witches from The Wizard of Oz merged with Alice in Wonderland's Queens, you have magical beings making random sense, and you have two children forced to try to learn to get through it all by helping each other and understanding the power of kindness over cruelty (sorry for the run-on sentence, but you get the point).

And all this is enjoyable and fun, and children will enjoy....except it all just ends, with the book getting through the first three quarters of the fantasy world, getting to the final quarter....and just stopping.  It's not a satisfying resolution or an end to any particular arc with a cliffhanger, it just ends.  That's frustrating for an adult book, and honestly I cannot imagine it being satisfied for a child, who will really wonder what's the point and not be satisfied at all.  So....I guess this is a thing?