This review is spoiler-free!
In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
Series: Wayward Children #4
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Release Date: January 8th 2019 by Tor.com
Format: Hardcover, 204 pages
Rating: ★★★★☆
Find it here: Goodreads || Book Depository
I just want to start this off by saying my only real gripe I ever have with this books and why they get a solid 4.5 stars from me instead of a full 5: TOO SHORT. I NEED MORE.
I know they’re like little bites of the world these characters wish they could go back to (most of the time, but we never see anything of the ones that don’t want to go back, so) and these books kind of give you the same feeling the kids feel, but I’m a greedy bitch and I want more. Like, an extra thirty pages, even, just so I can see some of the events that skipped over.
That said, I love this series. This installment in particular wasn’t my favorite, mostly because it really suffers from rushed scenes in places where I desperately wanted more details, but it has no less the whimsy that all the other books have had so far. The goblin market is absolutely fascinating, Lundy is a highly relatable character to me in particular (almost as much as Kade — can’t wait for his book!), and the prose is just *chef’s kiss* all the way through. If you’ve come this far with the series already, I say keep going. If you haven’t, but you plan on it, I say keep going.
If you’ve started the series and it’s not for you, I understand. I can’t say you might not like this one better, since it’s one of the “past” books (McGuire seems to be following a theme of present/past/present/past with her book publication — which I find so cool) and I tend to find them slightly more whimsical than the present ones (though, Beneath the Sugar Sky was almost a combination of past/present, which you’ll understand if you’ve read it), so I’m never, ever going to say “yeah, just stop” when it comes to these books. I probably wouldn’t say that for any series unless I’m particularly salty, actually, but, y’know. Take my words with a grain of salt and all that.
Anyway, Lundy is a spectacular and very interesting character, especially so considering how young she is when you first see her in Every Heart a Doorway, and that whole thing is explained in this book. The world is also just as cool as all the others we’ve seen so far, maybe even a little more because of a spoiler I can’t say, and the characters we meet I got attached to even though the book is so damn short. I honestly cannot wait for more!
Thanks for reading!
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