Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4/5 cats
“Nobody promised me a happy ending. They didn’t even promise me a happy existence.”
i love this series so dingdang much. it’s true that i gave this one four stars instead of the five stars i gave to the other two, but it’s a really high four stars. there’s been no decline in writing quality, character development, or worldbuilding, not even a little bit. the only thing i liked somewhat less here than the first two books is that it’s a slightly less dark tone on top of a quest storyline, and quest storylines can be a little predictable: go here, get this, locate this other thing, go here, add this. it’s like a recipe, which is very fitting, considering that this time, we are (mostly) in the nonsense/reason world of Confection, where everything is made of cake and candy and soda and cookies. i’m not usually into quests, but i am VERY into candy, so i love this world, with its butterscotch insects and candy corn fields. and by “slightly less dark,” i mean slightly less dark. bad things can happen even in a world with chocolate quarries. and they will.
but wonderful things also happen here, like the return of some characters from Every Heart a Doorway, plus new characters and new worlds to look forward to visiting in future books (RIGHT?), and the perfectly balanced blend of humor and melancholy so much a part of this series, along with some dialogue you’re not gonna find elsewhere:
“A cake’s a cake, whether or not it’s been frosted,” said the stranger primly.
“You are not a cake, you are a human being, and I can see your vagina,” snapped Nadya.
as always, the concept of many doorways/many worlds is an ancillary approach to the diversity theme, where characters who are all drawn to worlds with different magical attributes themselves have different real-world attributes: race, ethnicity, sexual or gender identity, body type, number of limbs, and in this one – basic corporeality; one character fading out of existence, one being built back into existence layer by layer.
rini is wonderfully fierce, and full of reasonable nonsense:
“I like existing. I’m not ready to unexist just because of stupid causality. I didn’t invite stupid causality to my birthday party, it doesn’t get to give me any presents.”
and overall, it’s another bizarre, surreal, fun, unexpected book in a series i love more than any other.
may it go on and on and on and on and on
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tor just posted excerpts and interior illustrations here:
http://www.tor.com/2017/06/28/illustr…
here is one:
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i just want to capture this for posterity, because while i know this is just a teasing, placeholder synopsis:
Takes place after Every Heart a Doorway and involves a great deal of nonsense.
i kind of love it.
GIVE TO ME THIS NONSENSE!!
