Across the Green Grass Fields is the sixth novella in Seanan McGuire's critically acclaimed and enormously popular "Wayward Children" series (which began with Every Heart a Doorway). For those unfamiliar with the series, the overlying premise is that there are a multitude of portal fantasy worlds out there that kids with troubles stumble into....and find themselves lost when they stumble back out of such worlds, leading to such children often being sent to a special school run by Eleanor West to help those kids move forward. Each odd numbered book in the series features the kids post-portal fantasy life dealing with their issues on a new adventure at the school and beyond, whereas Even numbered books - like this are the individual stories of a single kid in their fantasy world - how they got there, what it was to them, and what caused them to return to our world.
As I've said previously on this blog, I'm a huge McGuire fan, but have found this series kind of hit or miss....some installments have been really great, and others I've found hard to care about the contents and characters within.
Fortunately, this sixth installment is another winner for me, dealing with new character Regan - an intersex girl with a love of horses, who flees bullying into a world where every creature is a magical kind of horse - centaurs, unicorns, kelpies, etc. - and grows into someone more comfortable with herself, with friendship and family, and into the hero that this world deserves. Some really great stuff here, and well worth its Hugo nomination.
Some more specifics after the jump:
Quick Plot Summary: Regan was taught a lesson by her cruel best friend once while young: that she better fit in to that best friend's ideas of what are acceptable for a girl to like or face being ostracized. Luckily for her, a love of horses - her deepest love - is an acceptable love for a girl to have. But when Regan confides to that she is actually intersex, she finds herself ostracized anyway...
Distraught, Regan runs and runs until she finds a door...behind which is a world filled with magical horse-based creatures: Centaurs, Kelpies, Unicorns, and more. There, Regan finds herself adopted by a herd, seemingly able to grow up with support she never knew was possible. But this world is one that considers humans as the harbingers of great change, heroes who must save the land, and Regan will soon find that there is only so long she can avoid confronting such a destiny......
Thoughts: Across the Green Grass Fields works really well both in its setup and execution, as Regan is a really easy character to care about and enjoy. It's easy to understand how terrified she is of school bullying by her supposed friends, and how cruel they can be....and how scared and unsure she can be of her own seeming "strangeness" simply by being intersex, something she doesn't really know how to process at her age. And so well it's easy to understand her from the very beginning of this novella.
And then how Regan's journey goes through in the horse-based fantasy world also works really well, with her refusing to be a hero and to charge into danger just because of the type of person she is, and with her finding unconditional family and friendship love along the way, something she clearly needs. And then there's the final act, where she uses her understanding of being ostracized and of being a part of a family to challenge the status quo - to not let a cycle of cruelty towards some in favor of others continue.
The result is a really enjoyable and pretty strong installment in this series, one which I totally understand being nominated for Best Novella. Worth your time if you've enjoyed this series in the past, and a worthy reason to try this series (you can honestly read this book as a stand alone really).
No comments:
Post a Comment