The School for Wayward Children features in this latest episode set in the world of Wayward Children. I had previously read one of the YA urban fantasy books, Across the Green Grass Fields, which was a perfect setting for a horse lover like me. MISLAID IN PARTS HALF-KNOWN is a boarding school story, instead. Unlike Harry Potter’s school, people don’t take classes in spells and potions. They get normal schooling and evening counseling sessions to help them cope with having walked into other worlds. School life sounds boring; this may be Pandemic literature.
We follow Antoinette, or Antsy, Ricci, who arrives at Eleanor West’s school looking teenaged (young teen I would think) but with a mental age of about nine. She’s had a tough time, between a troubled family background and living for a few years in a curiosity shop between worlds. Antsy settles in, or doesn’t, over a few months. Eventually, things start to happen when two girl bullies try to get Antsy to operate dimension doors for them.
Readers who have already got a few of these books under their belts will know other characters; I didn’t. For that reason, I can’t suggest reading this as your first dip into the series. Some of the nicer young people like Cora, Chris, Kade, Sumi, and Emily, have already been featured in their adventures and are now back at school. We’re told that everyone ‘lost’ has found a magical Door to some world – different for everyone – and may have barely survived it. Several want to return there, but a few do not. There are rules to Doors. A lot of the book is spent in having conversations about rules and Doors. Something arises and the characters go to the next setting and continue that conversation. I started to wonder if anything was ever going to happen or if they were going to do anything. They do, but I could forgive readers for skipping pages.
Antsy’s Shop Where the Lost Things Go, staffed by Vineta and a magpie called Hudson, turns out to be a parable on the exploitation of workers and colonialism. Certainly, young children and teens do get exploited and worked without pay or rights in every country, so why wouldn’t it happen in magic door land? This is probably a good lesson for children to absorb. There are dinosaurs on the cover, and they are found behind one Door, but far fewer than the horse-like beings I enjoyed in Across the Green Grass Fields. MISLAID IN PARTS HALF-KNOWN ties up some character threads from Seanan McGuire’s earlier tales of Wayward Children, and fans will be interested to see if their friends get safely home – or wherever.
Portals and danger, and a girl who can find both in the next book in the Hugo and Nebula Award–Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire.
Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children.
When the school’s (literally irresistible) mean girl realizes that Antsy's talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, Antsy is forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise.
Along the way, they will travel from a world which hides painful memories that cut as sharply as its beauty, to a land that time wasn’t yet old enough to forget—and more than one student's life will change forever.
Mislaid in Parts Half-Known is a story that reminds us that getting what you want doesn't always mean finding what you need.
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