In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

This fourth entry and prequel tells the story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should.

When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she's found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well.

While I liked the world in this, the story didn't do much for me. Probably because we already know how this story ends. I kept waiting for the axe to drop. Onto the next one!

Definitely the best of the Wayward Children novellas so far. 3.75 stars

Ok, so this just isn't how books work. McGuire leads us up to the climactic battle and then...the next chapter opens the next day as they recouped from their wounds. Not just once but again and again throughout the book. I know this is a Thing she's doing on purpose, perhaps focusing on the interstitial days that actually make up a life? But it's jarring and distracting and I never did like Lundy that much anyway. The setting, as always, is fascinating and creative but I just could not get into this.

Overall, this was a pretty tight novella, or maybe because the rule-based world that Lundy escapes to is more appealing to me.

Katherine Lundy disappears into a mysterious door in a tree that takes her to the Goblin Market, a world where the concept of “fair value” rules over everything. Need a place to stay? You need to provide an item or a service to return fair value back to the person who puts you up for the night. She meets an owlish young girl, Moon, and the aged Archivist who explains the world to her. Lundy, as she comes to be called in this world, occasionally returns to her original world especially when her adventures in the Goblin Market end badly. Soon, she needs to make the choice between one world or the other forever.

This is another “origin story” book where we find out the backstory of one of the main characters in the present timeline, and this time it's Lundy. I've just had to go and re-read a summary of Every Heart A Doorway, which I've completely forgotten about at this point, to refresh my memory on the role Lundy plays in it. In this one, Lundy shows herself to be a pretty relatable protagonist: she yearns to get away from the real world and the bullying that being the principal's daughter gets her, but at the same time she cannot quite forget the family who, flawed as they are, wants the best for her - or at least, what they think is the best.

I do wish Moon and the Archivist had a bit more memorable personalities, however. I don't remember Moon to be anything other than a mischievous owl girl who is Lundy's best friend in the Goblin Market with no other point to her storyline, while the Archivist felt somewhat like a vehicle for lore dumping.

The Goblin Market was a nice reference to the famous poem by Christina Rossetti. I last read that poem many many years ago so I can't quite remember the details of it, but I have a vague recollection that it might have been an allegory about children interacting with the “temptations” of adulthood and then eventually regretting it when they can no longer reverse things. There is a slight parallel to this in the story, but not a strong one.

Overall though, this was still a great installment for this series and I'm looking forward to the next one.