Book Review: WHERE THE DROWNED GIRLS GO

TITLE: Where the Drowned Girls Go (Wayward Children Book 7)

AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire

160 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9781250213624 (hardcover, also in e-book and audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from the Goodreads page): Welcome to the Whitethorn Institute. The first step is always admitting you need help, and you've already taken that step by requesting a transfer into our company.

There is another school for children who fall through doors and fall back out again.
It isn't as friendly as Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children.
And it isn't as safe.

When Eleanor West decided to open her school, her sanctuary, her Home for Wayward Children, she knew from the beginning that there would be children she couldn't save; when Cora decides she needs a different direction, a different fate, a different prophecy, Miss West reluctantly agrees to transfer her to the other school, where things are run very differently by Whitehorn, the Headmaster.

She will soon discover that not all doors are welcoming...

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5.

MY THOUGHTS: Seanan McGuire’s “Wayward Children” series has settled into a comfortable rhythm: the odd numbered books are set in the present and usually involve several students going on a quest, while the even numbered books show us someone’s portal adventure – usually a character we’re already familiar with. In Book 6, Across the Green Grass Fields, McGuire veered from expectations by giving us the portal story of a brand-new character with no ties to the “present day” volumes. She continues to break expectations in Book 7, Where the Drowned Girls Go (releasing tomorrow, January 4, 2022), by having a student we’ve come to love decide that Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is no longer a place she wishes to be and requesting transfer to the other boarding school we’ve heard mention of. Cora’s had enough of quests, enough of trauma, enough of other beings trying to gain control over her life. It’s not a spoiler to say that despite Eleanor’s most persuasive arguments, the transfer goes through; the book isn’t focused on whether Cora will leave but rather what happens when she does.

I don’t think it’s out of line to call this Seanan’s “gothic romance without the romance” installment of the series, as opposed to the gothic horror of Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Come Tumbling Down. I love the Moors. I want an entire series set in the Moors. I don’t honestly think we’ve seen the last of the Moors. But this is not that kind of gothic story. No vampires, no revenants, no deep-dwelling elder gods (the last of which is exactly what Cora is trying to escape being controlled by). What this story has is a mansion walled off from all surrounding civilization, with dark drafty halls and stern unsmiling adult caretakers and rooms students aren’t allowed to visit and a headmaster with a secret; it has a scared and unhappy girl who thinks she has nowhere else to turn falling under the sway of someone who turns out to be at least as controlling as what she’s running away from and who must find her way out before things go from bad to worse. (And this is a Seanan McGuire book, so you know things are going to get worse before they get better.) I loved all the gothic tropes McGuire incorporates and occasionally upends. The Whitehorn Institute has an embedded, palpable sense of menace. I don’t know that I would describe Eleanor West’s Home as particularly joyous (the students are mostly happy, yes, many seem as content as kids waiting for a portal to reopen to the place the truly feel at home can be, but joyous? No.), but it looks like a constant carnival compared to the Whitehorn Institute. So dour and grey a place must haunt us going forward, and I have no doubt that we haven’t seen the last of the place or of its staff, remaining students, and headmaster.

The wonderful thing about the “Wayward Children” series is that the installments really can be read in any order. Each installment includes whatever information a reader might need to “catch up” on previous volumes without having everything about those previous volumes spoiled. In Drowned Girls, we are reminded of (or introduced to) the bits of Come Tumbling Down and Beneath the Sugar Sky that are pertinent to Cora’s present journey, and they are enough to refresh ongoing readers’ memories and hopefully intrigue new readers.

And this is Cora’s journey we’re on. Mood and classic tropes can only take us so far if we don’t care about the character we’re following into the place. And we do care about Cora. Even if you haven’t read any of the previous books she’s appeared in, you’ll care about her within the first few pages. You’ll recognize her fear that the home she loves is out of her reach, that she’s stuck in a world that doesn’t understand her, that she’s drawn the attention of otherworldly beings who might, through her, find a way to lay waste to the home she loves. (Okay, yeah, most of us don’t encounter that last one – but many of us do encounter thoughts in our own heads that feel otherworldly and controlling and that we’d do anything to escape from. Has McGuire given us ocean-dwelling elder gods as a metaphor for mental illness? I think maybe she has.) You will recognize her need to do something, anything, to change her situation because her situation has become unhealthy and untenable. And you will recognize all the doubts that come along with the thing she does, and the steps she takes to make things as right as she can.

Cora is not the only familiar character appearing in Where the Drowned Girls Go. But telling you who else shows up and what roles they end up playing is a level of spoiler to which I will not descend. Because of when I’m posting this, it’s likely the book is already available in e-format wherever you are, with the print edition easily orderable. So get to it. You won’t be disappointed if you like gothic tales, boarding school tales, tales with magic and danger and in which portals are not the only way to find adventure.

NOTE: I did receive an e-ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.

Book Review: THE CHOSEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL

TITLE: The Chosen and the Beautiful

AUTHOR: Nghi Vo

272 pages, Tordotcom Publishing, ISBN 9781250784780

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society―she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how. In The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo reinvents F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Nigh Vo’s reinvention of The Great Gatsby gives voice to characters Fitzgerald barely allowed to speak and classes of people he barely acknowledged existed (if at all), and in doing so opens up the narrative in wonderful, startling ways. And the author does it all while adhering pretty closely to Fitzgerald’s plot and pacing. Vo and fellow authors like Victor LaValle (The Ballad of Black Tom, which reinvents Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook”), are at the leading edge of writers who are confronting the racism in American classics (sometimes blatant, as with Lovecraft, sometimes by total exclusion from the narrative, like Fitzgerald) by filling in the time-gaps in the original novels or by showing key scenes from a new or different character’s perspective.

Vo does this first and foremost by having Jordan Baker, who is barely a presence in Fitzgerald’s novel, become our narrator in place of Nick Carroway. Giving us the story from any woman’s perspective would change how we see the events of Gatsby but giving it to us through the eyes of a character Fitzgerald didn’t bother to develop allows Vo to fill in scenes Fitzgerald doesn’t give us. And since Jordan is so ill-defined in the original novel, Vo can make the character anyone she wants Jordan to be – in this case, a child ripped from her homeland by an earnest missionary and raised in relative high society. We never quite learn whether Jordan was actually an orphan when she was brought to the States, but the heavy implication is that she was “rescued” perhaps against her family’s will. Vo uses Jordan to shed light not just on how the rich view anyone who is different but also on the unsavory aspects of the Chinese Exclusion Act and other anti-Asian-immigration legislation of the era. (And if that isn’t timely and pertinent in 2021, you’re not paying attention.)

Vo also expands the sexuality of the main characters. Jordan is clearly bisexual (or maybe what we would now call pansexual) as are, by implication at least, Gatsby and Nick and perhaps even Daisy. We never see Gatsby and Nick in the act, as it were, but Jordan sees through their denials pretty easily. There’s no judgement between the characters, although there is a fair amount of jealousy. And this is one spot where Jordan is more like her rich white peers than she’d like to admit: they all seem to “get away” with same-sex liaisons without fear of repercussion – even though in that time period being found out as a “degenerate” could result in jail time, psychiatric hospitalization, and loss of job/family/etc. (I put “get away” in quotes because while the societal repercussions may not be explored, the emotional ones are – these characters devastate each other over and over again, and it’s both fascinating and infuriating to watch.) The possibilities of being caught by the police never seem to occur to the characters, although there is a nod toward the magic that hides a gay nightclub in plain sight.

And that’s the other major difference between The Great Gatsby and The Chosen and the Beautiful: the magic. Vo builds the societal acceptance of magic into virtually every page of the book. “Demonaic” liquor enables Jordan and Daisy to float around the ceilings of Daisy and Tom’s mansion at the start of the book. We learn that Jordan is able to do paper magic, building things and even people out of paper. She’s the only one she knows who can do this, until she meets some Chinese performers via one of Gatsby’s parties and discovers how much more powerful this magic can be. There’s the heavy implication that the “money” behind Gatsby being able to afford his mansion and parties is literally infernal. The magic isn’t just set-dressing. Vo has clearly given a lot of thought to how it all works, and to how and where it informs/influences the events of the original novel.

And here’s where I have to admit: I have no recall of every having read The Great Gatsby in high school or college. Classmates assure me we did, but it was probably one of those books I skimmed the Cliff Notes for because I hated being told what to read when I was in high school. I also have never seen the various movie adaptations. So once I was done with The Chosen and the Beautiful, I decided I had to read Gatsby to see how closely Vo stuck to the source material. After doing so, I was even more impressed with the magic Vo introduces – little innocuous turns of phrase in Fitzgerald’s hands turn into beautifully detailed magic in Vo’s. Which really can be said of the whole book. I liked Gatsby well enough once I finally read it for what it is, but Vo expands it into so much more.

I received an e-ARC from NetGalley in advance of the book’s June 1 publication date, although this review is being posted well after that date.

Book Review: FIRST, BECOME ASHES

TITLE: First, Become Ashes

AUTHOR: K.M. Szpara

304 pages, Publisher, ISBN 9781250216182 (hardcover, also available in e-book and audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): The Fellowship raised Lark to kill monsters. His partner betrayed them to the Feds. But Lark knows his magic is real, and he’ll do anything to complete his quest.

For thirty years, the Fellowship of the Anointed isolated its members, conditioning them to believe that pain is power. That magic is suffering. That the world beyond the fence has fallen prey to monsters. But when their leader is arrested, all her teachings come into question. Those touched by the Fellowship face a choice: how will they adjust to the world they were taught to fear, and how will they relate to the cult's last crusader, Lark? For Kane, survival means rejecting the magic he and his lover suffered for. For Deryn, the cult's collapse is an opportunity to prove they are worth as much as their Anointed brother. For Calvin, Lark is the alluring embodiment of the magic he's been seeking his entire life. But for Lark, the Fellowship isn’t over. Before he can begin to discover himself and heal a lifetime of traumas, he has a monster to slay. First, Become Ashes contains explicit sadomasochism and sexual content, as well as abuse and consent violations, including rape.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: In First, Become Ashes, K.M. Szpara asks some heavy questions about belief and identity, filtered through the first-person narration of four quite different voices: a true believer, a former believer, a skeptical believer, and an outsider who wants to believe. Any one of these characters could have narrated the entire book and the story would have been compelling enough. Splitting the narration between the four allows readers to read between the lines of their individual stories to see a bigger picture. Multiple narrators also allow the author to show some of the breadth and depth of how different people process trauma and abandonment.

At its heart, First, Become Ashes is about how belief shapes identity, and how loss of belief can sometimes shatter that sense of self (unless something equally worth believing in replaces it). In this regard, lovers Lark and Kane are a study in contrasts. When we first meet Lark, he is resolute in his belief in the teachings of Nova and the Fellowship. Nova can do no wrong, anything she requires of him must be for the good of the community no matter how painful or unpalatable it might be. Lark is willing to be used and abused if it means he’s really as special as Nova claims; he’s willing to abuse others if it means he gets to fulfill the destiny laid out for him in whatever passes for the Fellowship’s scriptures. When we finally read chapters from Kane’s perspective, we see a man who has lost all faith in the tradition in which he was raised. He recognizes Nova’s abuses for what they are; he realizes that in believing her lies he’s been forced to hurt the man he loves and be hurt in turn. Lark’s total devotion to the cause empowers his magic – Kane’s departure from the faith destroys his. As Lark goes on his quest to hunt a monster, to fulfill what he’s been trained and raised to do, questions about whether Kane and others might be right in their assessment of Nova’s rituals and intent lead to Lark’s magic seeming to fail him in certain situations. Wanting to bring Lark home safely, to rescue the man he loves from their former life, Kane’s magic seems to work in certain situations despite his lack of belief. Both men wonder if they can survive in a world without the control and structure the Fellowship demanded, as do the few other “Anointed” we meet.

As a Fellow rather than an Anointed, Deryn provides yet another point-of-view to be considered: what if the magic is real, even if the mission is false and the structure of the Fellowship is abusive? Anointed and then demoted, they question everything: their place in the Fellowship, their role as Lark’s sibling, their worth to the society outside the Fellowship. But they never really question the magic itself, and in fact encourage others to believe in it, including FBI Agent Miller who has been investigating the Fellowship her entire career. Deryn and Miller are characters whose separate experiences explicate how abandonment also shapes sense-of-self. Without spoiling anything, what they have in common is that they were both told they were something special, only to be told that they weren’t special enough. Everything Deryn and Miller do is motivated by needing to understand why things changed, why they were cast aside for others. There are no chapters from Miller’s perspective, so we never really get to see her own take on being abandoned, but her experiences are mirrored in Deryn and over time they become kindred spirits.

And then there’s Calvin: a cosplayer and social media “influencer” who is as aware of the Fellowship as anyone who lives near their compound in Baltimore but has no idea how deep the teachings go. Calvin would have been the target audience if someone had filmed a documentary or reality show about the Fellowship; he might even have been one of those folks who becomes obsessed with the subjects of such a show. Calvin combines aspects of the other characters in his “outsider” perspective. He has been abandoned by his family for not being what they wanted him to be (like Deryn and Miller), he desperately wants magic to be real (like Lark) but is appalled at the cost once he becomes aware of it (like Kane).

Readers should be warned that Szpara does not go light on the emotional or physical abuse these four characters have experienced. Most of it is revealed in flashback but some of it is current, and there’s no “fade to black / let the reader infer” when these events happen. I leave it up to survivors of abuse to discuss how accurate/realistic the characters’ reactions are. Likewise, I leave analysis of the consensual BDSM scenes to members of that community to weigh in on.

First, Become Ashes is not an easy read, with all of the raw emotional and physical trauma the four main characters experience. But it is an engrossing read with characters I came to deeply care about.

(NOTE: I read an e-ARC of First, Become Ashes which I received from NetGalley. I completed reading the book well before publication date but this review was delayed for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with the book itself.)