In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children Book 4)

In each book of the Wayward Children series, readers are teleported into a new portal world. This 4th installment has probably the most intriguing and well crafted portal world. It’s loosely based off the poem “The Goblin Market” where inhabitants can visit various merchant stalls of a somewhat magical and enchanting market. Ms. McGuire’s magical goblin market, however, doesn’t operate per currency. Rather, the sellers and buyers agree to what constitutes fair value. The buyer must be careful as to what they trade, as debts in the world of the Goblin market have consequences. As an example, our heroine Lundy commonly offers a pencil in exchange for a year-long supply of meat pies– adults in the Goblin Market love being able to write things down, but pencils are not created in their world. A pencil thus has pretty high value, at least to those who want to write things down. The whole concept is commentary on today’s social and economic disparities; a $5 meatpie isn’t worth much to someone making 6-figures, but may be a lot to someone who only has $5 to their name. The characters of the portal world also further build upon the atmosphere of the world. The two main market characters are Moon and the Archivist. Moon is a young girl who was abandoned at the market at a young age and as such is trapped as a citizen of the market. She doesn’t have a home to return to, so she is only a lost child subject to her childish whims and best efforts to follow the market’s rules and not incur debt. Moon becomes a dear friend to Lundy, who, as a child, Lundy is able to travel back and forth between her world and the goblin market as she wishes. But she cannot travel and and forth when she turns 18, so she must choose to stay and take an oath of citizenship prior to her 18th birthday. Moon is someone who needs Lundy’s support, so can she leave her friend behind when the time comes? The Archivist is the responsible adult figure that Lundy frequently seeks for advice. The Archivist is knowledgeable of the market and its rules. She has answers to most problems that Lundy and Moon have and will help out in exchange for a fair price. The novella itself is mainly about Lundy and the Market, so while important events happen within it, they take a backseat to focus on Lundy’s adventures. All Wayward Children books are standalone, but I recommend reading the first book, Every Heart a Doorway , prior to this one.

In an Absent Dream is the 4th book in the Wayward Children series. It's funny. I'm used to some sort of rhythm when it comes to book series, but this one is different. In the first book "Every Heart A Doorway", we the readers, meat a cast of characters, a home for lost "fairy-tale" children and a keeper by the name of Eleanor West (who was also a castaway fairy-tale child). The second book "Down Among the Sticks and Bones" follows a character from the first book, so does the 3rd book "Beneath the Sugar Sky", so I was expecting to find another character from the first book in this 4th book. Alas, that is not so, which makes me more excited. How long can this series go on? Because, I would read it forever. Truly. This is my fourth review and if you haven't read my others, let me summarize as quick as I can the last four books. This series is about lost fairy-tale children. Ordinary human children for whatever reason are special enough to find a secret and hidden door to a magical land. These lands or worlds are very different from one to the next, with very different themes. Logical, Illogical, Wicked and Virtuous. These worlds all have their own set of rules and if the child happens to break a set rule on purpose or mistake they are likely banished from that said world. The first book describes a home for these lost children. Ruled by a (lost) grown woman who knows what it feels like to be lost. The home is to keep them "happy" until they find their doors again, or if not to help them figure out how to be "normal" again in our boring old earth world. In the 2nd and 3rd book we get to witness first hand what it's like it those different worlds. One, Gothic and dark with mad scientists and vampires. The other world a child's dream made of candy. The fourth book is different. We go back to learning about a new character and a new world. In an Absent Dream is set in a Goblin Market were fair value rules the land. Our main character Katherine Lundy stumbles upon this land one day when she is 8. She walks through a mystical tree into a land where the Market rules all the people in it's own kind of fairness. If you do not barter well and do not give fair value you turn into a bird slowly. But the Market is kind if you are under 18 and allows you to work off debts to become human again. Our main character Lundy likes this place, but is uncertain of the rules. She learns quickly. But not quick enough. She is a rule follower, but everyone gets greedy at one point or another and she learns the hard way. I'm excited with the ending. It leaves us to believe there is a continuation. I don't remember Lundy in the first book, but maybe she was there. If not we can expect, maybe, a small role in the 5th book. Here on Goodreads, there is a 5th book in the works and I definitely will be buying it. Lets talk about the author Seanan McGuire for a second. She is absolutely an amazing story teller. I am floored how quickly I am interested in all the characters and care for what happens next. I love the way the story's unfold. Slow and steady, but full of imagery. I will definitely read until this series ends and I'm very interested in reading her other works. I hope they are all as good as this series.

Seanan McGuire's <i>In an Absent Dream</i> is the story about Katherine Lundy, a quiet, bookish girl who doesn't feel at ease with her surroundings. She loves stories, so she finds comfort in books, and she loves rules not, as the story tells us later on, simply because she's supposed to, but because following them "could make you an invisible person, and invisible people got to do as they liked." (Katherine is also fond of loopholes.) (Katherine would have been a Slytherin.) At school, she's guarded and reserved, and, as the principal's daughter and the subject to some bullying, not at all quick to make friends. At home, she's distant and struggles to connect with her family, mostly because they constantly fail to properly see her for the person she is. <i>Let us speak, for a moment, on the matter of sisters. They can be enemies to fight or companions to lean upon: they can, at times, be strangers. They are not required to be friends, or to have involvement in one another’s lives, or to be anything more than strangers united by the circumstances of their birth. Still, there is a magic in the word “sister,” a magic which speaks of shared roots and hence shared branches, of a certain ease that is always to be pursued, if not always to be found.</i> One day, walking home from school, Katherine stumbles upon an old, gnarled and twisting tree that seems to be plucked straight out from a fairy tale. Carved inside the tree is a door, with the words "Be Sure" engraved upon it. Are we at all surprised when Katherine walks up to it, turns the knob to open it, and walks through? We've known her only a short time at this point, but we know — we're <i>sure</i> — this action was as inevitable as death. This is a story about identity, and belonging. About searching for a place to call home, and what home means, and the price you have to pay to find it. <i>What is home, after all, apart from the place one returns to when the adventure is over? Home is an end to glory, a stopping point when the tale is done.</i> Three pages were all it took for me to remember just why I love this series so much. Seanan McGuire's language in these books is lyrical and lush and drop-dead gorgeous, perfectly capturing the rhythm and beats of traditional fairy tales while still retaining enough of McGuire's darker, modern edge. And it's a sharp edge at that. One of the most striking things about the writing in the Wayward Children books is how brutally honest it can be. The language is luxurious, but it is used to reveal some harsh truths. <i>It is so often easy, when one has the luxury of being sure a thing will never happen, to be equally sure of one’s answers. Reality, it must sadly be said, has a way of complicating things, even things we might believe could never be that complicated.</i> And this is a harsh story. Beautiful, to be sure, but Lundy's tale is, ultimately, a tragic one, and the writing delivers on that, one bittersweet line at a time.

This series gets better and better with each installment, and it’s without a doubt one of my favorite series ever. In An Absent Dream features Katherine Lundy, a girl who is enthusiastic about everything society deems “male” yet knows she will have to live like a “normal female.” When Katherine discovers her door, she is taken to the Goblin Market. What drew me into this book was it’s themes of fairness and poverty. The Goblin Market reminds me of our capitalist society...just with some tweaks to make it more fair. For example, if someone had a dollar in the market and someone had $100, in the market food prices would scale to allow both parties to live comfortably. I was also pulled in by the commentary on poverty as seen through the character Moon. Moon is Katherine’s best friend in the market. She’s lived a tough life without her parents and is progressively making decisions that earn her more debt. Katherine can’t understand why Moon keeps making bad decisions and The Archivist, the mediator of the Goblin Market, points out that Katherine is just a visitor, she can leave when she wants. But Moon has had to fend for herself for years since she was a baby and sometimes being desperate causes people to do desperate things and leads people to take advantage of them. What’s worse is there is no leaving for Moon. The themes along with McGuire’s lyrical writing make for an unforgettable read which I know will be a favorite of mine this year!

When I was a child, I went through a period of time where wondered, on and off, if I was adopted. I'm sure that it was brought on by some book I that read, or a movie that I watched, and I even think I asked my mom once. She laughed it off, assured me that wasn't the case, proceeded to show me baby photos that I'd seen countless times before. But not long after I caught her silently wiping at her eyes. She couldn't help it, I understood it even then, but I think that a few children sometimes wonder these things. I think it's borne out of the same curiosity which makes some of us also question if there are other worlds out there full of magic and possibilities that our “real” world does not offer—with far-off quests, vicious villains, brave heroes and wild monsters to conquer. Even after we grow up, we keep these fantasies. At least book lovers do. I know that I keep to them. In an Absent Dream brought all of that back. Not the adoption part. Though the memory was triggered, my parents have convinced me of the improbability of this. But rather the possibility of those alternate worlds. And who's to say that they're not true? No one knows all there is to know of the universe. And thank goodness for that, since it means that mysteries still exist. Lundy is a child with a ferocious imagination who does not belong in the world onto which she is born. I don't think that she even realizes this until she comes across that magical tree and looks upon her first door with the words BE SURE written cleverly over it. But she goes through the door and steps into the Goblin Market, leaving behind the house with her first family and stepping into her true home with a new family of her choosing. The rules are set for her from the beginning—as they oftentimes are in fairy tales of a sort—the warning is given for them to be followed, and a price must be paid when they are broken. And the price of those broken rules is that the child who had found her home is banished, the magic is removed and set as punishment, and she never gets to walk through the door again. I've had my ups and downs with the books in this series, and since I do tend to lean and favor the darker tales that follow a plot like this one—which is why so far, my favorite in this set of books has been Down Among the Sticks and Bones—there was a sort of bleak loveliness to this installment. Call me a glutton for dreariness in stories, and I'll be guilty as charged. It didn't grasp me at first, but the closer I got to the ending, the more I appreciated that bleakness and therefore the good in the novel. Where at first I found annoyance in the fact that the world outside the Goblin Market barely held description, I realized it was to better drive home the point that the Goblin Market was really all that mattered to Lundy and therefore deserved attention. Where I wished more interaction would have occurred between Lundy and her family outside the Goblin Market, more did I enjoy it when it did happen in the form of Diana and her desperation to have the love of her sister. And where I wished that we would've witnessed the actual action between Lundy and the moments with the battle and conquest of the Wasp King or the Bone Wraiths, the more I appreciated the growth, rather, that the character had after these events. Part of me still wants for the things that I feel I was cheated out of, but we come to the fair value of the story and sometimes it gives before taking again. There's anguish and loss and happiness to be found, and I think that Lundy got just what she wanted in the end. However, it brings home once more something that the Archivist attempted to instill in Lundy more than once (and us, as the attentive reader): be sure, before you ask, or request, or want for something, because there is always a price to pay. Lundy got just what she asked for, but it came at a stark cost.

Looking for fair value in an unfair world can lead even the most sensible child to look elsewhere for a place to call Home. What would you do or give up to be seen, truly seen, understood and surrounded by those who see things as you do? This series just keeps getting better and better! I really thought I couldn't be any more impressed. That was until I devoured my preordered copy, the very day it was released, and suddenly I am blown away... again! How can a simple concept such as children who don't easily fit in finding a way to escape their mundane/ill fitting reality only to encounter and enter a fairytale like, alternate, more accepting world give us such a gamut of supremely worthy material? The world building and prose are vivid while the characters are diverse. Ultimately Mrs. McGuire has graciously thought into being new and fantastical worlds that surpass the proceeding ones with imagination too beautiful for words. This one is centered around Katherine Lundy who prefers to be called by her last name only (it's a Goblin Market thing, you'll see). Lundy finds the world she was born to to be unjust, especially with how it treats its children. When she finds her way to the door in the tree that is boldly displaying the words "BE SURE", Lundy has never been so sure of anything in her whole life. This book, based on Rosetti's poem The Goblin Market, has an ethereal and melodic cadence. The writing is simply gorgeous without being too flowery or verbose. The characters are rich, multidimensional and at once relateable. I won't go into anymore detail than that because I went into this one blind, enjoyed every single second of it and believe wholeheartedly that you will too. ~Enjoy

I’m convinced the ‘Wayward Children’ series are fairy tales for adults whose door never opened for them as children, who are holding out hope against hope that some day their door will finally appear. ‘Alas, that this is not a fairy tale.’ Okay, Seanan, I hear you. So it’s not a fairy tale, but it’s a cautionary tale, right? ‘this is Lundy’s story, Lundy’s cautionary tale’ This cautionary tale’s doorway leads to the Goblin Market which, despite the fact that I would never make it a day there, still made me yearn for my own doorway to appear. It also made me want to reread ‘Every Heart a Doorway’ to revisit Lundy’s journey after the conclusion of this book. Lundy is this tale’s Wayward and she’s a reader! ‘Everything was a story, if studied in the right fashion.’ She won my heart before I knew anything else about this precious soul. Lundy is also a strict keeper of rules, which is exactly why her doorway would never even consider me a possibility. ‘Following the rules didn’t make you a good person, just like breaking them didn’t make you a bad one, but it could make you an invisible person, and invisible people got to do as they liked.’ This is a book of friendship and loyalty, of being torn between what you want and what you need, and of pies. Oh, the pies! I need to eat all of the pies. I adored the Archivist, had a soft spot for Moon and wish I had gotten to know Mockery. I loved learning about how the Goblin Market’s rules work and especially loved the idea, foreign in our own, that unfair things always come with consequences. I’m also entirely in love with that cover artwork and the gorgeous illustrations. I need a print of that doorway in the tree that’s large enough to span an entire wall so I can gaze at it all day, waiting for it to magically transform into the doorway to my world. I was disappointed that some of the most exciting scenes happened off the page. I wanted to witness firsthand the battles that had been fought and won by characters when I wasn’t looking, and to be told of their conclusion rather than being shown them was frustrating for me. Maybe it’s wishful thinking but I keep hoping there will be a ‘Wayward Children’ book that explores the world I should be living in and that the simple act of opening the pages will open its doorway for me. “It is a place where dreamers go when they don’t fit in with the dreams their homes think worth dreaming. Doors lead here. Perhaps you found one.” How am I supposed to wait an entire year for ‘Come Tumbling Down’?!

While I love this series, I think I’m starting to hit a point of diminishing returns on reading it. There were elements of Absent Dream that I really loved, but there was also plenty of feeling like it wasn’t living up to the potential the first two novellas in the Wayward Children series. In its favor, though, is the fact that the more time I spent since reading it, the more I fondly I think of it. Getting Lundy’s story was great, she is well written and the premise was very entertaining. I enjoyed a lot of of her story, though the pacing felt really odd to me and I can’t put my finger on why. I really love Seanen McGuire’s storytelling abilities, and the way she crafts every one of her characters. There was not a bad character or a poorly written character in the entire story and that is something noteworthy. The other thing I struggled with was the concept of fairness present in the Goblin Market. I understand what the novella was getting at, and things could be fairer in the real world, but when everyone doesn’t have exactly the same amount of money then the inherent value of things will always be different to people of different social or economic backgrounds. I’m not sure how fixing that is possible, and that makes me question the message of the story. I think this one just didn’t work for me, unfortunately. Still better than Beneath a Sugar Sky, but not as great as Down Among the Sticks and Bones which is the one to beat right now for me. 3 stars.