Book Review: Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

I should love Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series, and after reading the first book, I really thought I would. But now, 5 books in to the series, I think it’s time to drill down into why it doesn’t work for me, and why I’ve also become somewhat disillusioned with McGuire’s writing in the past couple of years.

In Every Heart a Doorway, the first book of the Wayward Children series, McGuire established a fascinating premise. Readers were introduced to Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children, a boarding school for young people who had returned from their adventures beyond strange doorways.

Wayward Children is an examination of the portal fantasies we grew up with, such as the Narnia series (and I think I’ll have more to say about this sub-genre and the books reexamining it soon). It’s also an incredibly diverse and queer series. And it also has, for me, completely failed to live up to the promise set in the first book.

Part of this comes down to my issue with novellas (which is also going to be the topic of a future blog post; I made sure I had a lot of topics saved up before I launched this site). But I think part of this also has to be chalked up to the author not pushing herself far enough.

To illustrate this, let’s move on to actually talking about Come Tumbling Down. I’m not going to discuss the nitty-gritty of the plot much, because it requires spoiling things that happen in both Book 1 and Book 2 of the series (although the book’s description spoils those pretty well).

To summarize the plot, a former student at the school has returned to the school because she needs help with a problem in the magical world she now lives in. Several of her fellow students, including one who has arrived since she left, all agree to help. They go the headmistress who says “No, one of our rules is no quests” and they’re like “Ok yeah but we want to go on the quest” and she says “Fine but be careful.”

Until the very end, almost every conflict in this book is handled similarly. The characters simply talk people around to what they want, and without much effort. And don’t get me wrong, I like seeing non-violent solutions to problems, but it ultimately feels like 90-95% of this novella was people sniping and snarking and quipping at each other as they traveled from Point A to Point B before eventually landing at the final conflict which required a little more effort.

Did I mention the quipping? The dialog is very quip heavy. And when it’s not quippy, it’s… hmm… it’s always embarrassing as a writer when I can’t find the word I want. Faux-deep. That’s not a thing. But it will do for now (help, I’m an editor who needs an editor).

And that brings me to part of my problem with Wayward Children, and that is the author herself. The thing is, I used to be a huge fan of Seanan McGuire. I read everything she wrote, for years. At the end of Come Tumbling Down I found the typical “Also by this author” list and I counted and I believe I have read over 30 books by McGuire since the release of Rosemary and Rue in late 2009. That’s a lot of books to have read by a single author in under 12 years, and that’s not even everything she’s written in that time.

I really admire McGuire’s productivity, and a lot of the book she wrote during that time were original and awesome and heartbreaking and weird. But in the past two years I feel like she’s almost become a caricature of herself, just really over-indulging in certain tropes and style of dialog until her stories cease to feel like an example of real people who happen to live in a magical word, and instead consist of people who exist only to speak and think in quips and aphorisms (was that the word I was looking for?).

I want to stress again: I really and truly want to like the Wayward Children series. I love fiction that reexamines genres that I like from a different angle, or which retell old stories, or which breathe exciting new life into genres I found boring. I love fiction that looks at the mental and emotional toll of adventuring. I love fiction that considers the ramifications of children being forced into positions of responsibility and danger. I love fiction that puts people of all races, genders, sexualities, and abilities in the hero’s role.

Unfortunately, no matter who is the main character in these stories, they all feel the same. A magical world brimming with potential, a goal to achieve, and a character who quips and broods and aphorises (that’s definitely not a word) their way to the end of the too-short story.

I wish McGuire was taking her time with these stories. Like so many novellas, I wish these were full-length novels that could take the time to really explore the themes they’re considering. I wish that the quest at the heart of Come Tumbling Down had actually felt like a quest.

I’m going to read the next Wayward Children book because it’s horse themed and as a recovered Horse Girl of the 80s and 90s, I desperately need a book that will make me feel things about my thwarted childhood dreams, but beyond that I think I am going to return to only reading McGuire’s October Daye series.

Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? What was the catalyst that changed your opinion?

About the links: All links in this article are Bookshop.org affiliate links. If you purchase a book using my link, I will get a commission and you will be supporting independent bookstores! If you do not use my links I highly encourage you to get your books from a local indie store, or your local library system (which is where I got Come Tumbling Down).