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In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire
Jul. 9th, 2020 04:56 pmI gather this novella is one in a series of books by McGuire about kids going to other worlds through portals, which I haven't read, but it mostly stands on its own (other than the very last scene) so that's ok.
Lundy first goes through a portal to her other world when she's 8, and then spends the next decade splitting time between the world of her birth and the world of the Goblin Market. She has until she's 18 to decide which side of the portal she will end up permanently on, and after that no more visiting the other will be allowed.
I cared a lot about Lundy and was very invested in her story! And I liked her complicated friendship with Moon, and the world of the Market intrigued me.
Not everything about the book works for me, though. For starters, we don't get to see much of what it's actually like for Lundy living in the Market, because the narrative just focuses on the transition days when she goes from one world to the other. So it feels like all the really formative events in her life happen off-screen, which makes it hard for me to emotionally connect with Lundy's feeling that the Market is home. We also don't get to see much of importance from her relationship with her sister, again focusing only on the transition days, which similarly makes it difficult to see why Lundy has an interest in staying in her birth-world.
This all, to me, detracts from allowing the reader to really feel the difficulty of Lundy's decision, between the Market and her sister, because we haven't been shown what's most appealing about either choice.
The other thing is that I find the ending to be unsatisfying. ( Read more... )
Lundy first goes through a portal to her other world when she's 8, and then spends the next decade splitting time between the world of her birth and the world of the Goblin Market. She has until she's 18 to decide which side of the portal she will end up permanently on, and after that no more visiting the other will be allowed.
I cared a lot about Lundy and was very invested in her story! And I liked her complicated friendship with Moon, and the world of the Market intrigued me.
Not everything about the book works for me, though. For starters, we don't get to see much of what it's actually like for Lundy living in the Market, because the narrative just focuses on the transition days when she goes from one world to the other. So it feels like all the really formative events in her life happen off-screen, which makes it hard for me to emotionally connect with Lundy's feeling that the Market is home. We also don't get to see much of importance from her relationship with her sister, again focusing only on the transition days, which similarly makes it difficult to see why Lundy has an interest in staying in her birth-world.
This all, to me, detracts from allowing the reader to really feel the difficulty of Lundy's decision, between the Market and her sister, because we haven't been shown what's most appealing about either choice.
The other thing is that I find the ending to be unsatisfying. ( Read more... )
