Novella review: Every Heart a Doorway
So, if you’re looking for a rather quick read that’s part fantasy, part murder mystery, check out Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire.
Every Heart a Doorway tells the tale of Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children, sort of a boarding school, sort of sanitarium for kids who have quite literally fallen through the looking glass and come home. These kids are broken, not because the mirrors they fell into, the doors they stumbled through lead them into Hellish nightmares, but rather, because the worlds they left either by accident or by force felt like where they truly belonged. They’re broken because home no longer feels like home. They wind up at Eleanor’s because their families want them fixed, or barring that, simply out of the way. Little do they know that Eleanor West has secrets, and that her school very well may just keep its charges… permanently.
Every Heart a Doorway is a gorgeous novella that examines what Alice, what the Jacks and Jills would do and feel after they returned from their adventures and came back to the mundane world. It reads like Grimm’s and Agatha Christie, with a dash of Mary Shelly, all while remaining distinctly a work of McGuire’s own. She has a vast knowledge of many genres and a iron-clad command of her craft that allows her to bend genre to her will.
Every Heart a Doorway is delightfully dark and wonderfully written. You won’t be disappointed.
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