Title
In An Absent Dream (Wayward Children Book #4)
Author
Hi! I’m Seanan McGuire, author of the Toby Daye series (Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, Late Eclipses), as well as a lot of other things. I’m also Mira Grant (www.miragrant.com), author of Feed and Deadline.
Born and raised in Northern California, I fear weather and am remarkably laid-back about rattlesnakes. I watch too many horror movies, read too many comic books, and share my house with two monsters in feline form, Lilly and Alice (Siamese and Maine Coon).
Connect with Seanan on their website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, or Instagram.
Book Details
Publication Date: January 8, 2019
Publisher: Tour.com
ISBN: 9780765399298
Book Description
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.
My Thoughts & Takeaways
What’s the Goblin Market?
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.
In the first Wayward Children book, Every Heart a Doorway, we were introduced to Miss West’s Home for Wayward Children, where children are given a safe place to recover from their otherworldly experiences. All of these children have somehow visited different lands – of all different varieties. The common denominator? They’ve all been forced to return “home.”
In the second book, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, we got to explore the origin story of Jack and Jill. In the third book, Beneath the Sugar Sky, we got to explore the world of Confection.
I do think that Down Among the Sticks and Bones my favorite so far; however, In An Absent Dream has given it a very, very close run.
I feel myself in Lundy so much. Lundy is an outsider – she never really fits in, always feels best inside a book, and feels comfortable alone.
In addition to this story being about outsiders, it’s also about living in a world that is unfair.
“If you give everyone fair value, no one wants. If no one wants, no one has to take. The Market makes sure we don’t take advantage of each other.”
We follow Lundy through a door when she is eight years old and into another world, Goblin Market. In the Market, everything must receive fair value, something that is enforced and varies from individual to individual.
Read my review for the next book in the series, Come Tumbling Down.
Favorite Quotes
“…was ordinary enough to have become remarkable entirely without noticing it.“
“In the way of bookish children, she carried her books into trees and along the banks of chuckling creeks, weaving her way along their slippery shores with the sort of grace that belongs only to bibliophiles protecting their treasures.“
“It is an interesting thing, to trust one’s feet. The heart may yearn for adventure while the head thinks sensibly of home, but the feet are a mixture of the two, dipping first one way and then the other.“
“…bright, shimmering thing is almost certainly looking to be seen, and that which hopes to be seen is pursuing its own agenda.“
“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.“
“You can’t save anyone if you neglect yourself. All you can do is fall slowly with them.“
“No one serves their friends by grinding themselves into dust on the altar of compassion.”
