Mislaid In Parts Half-Known (Wayward Children book 9) by Seanan McGuire (book review)
There can’t be many children who, at one time or another, haven’t imagined a world that is ideal for them. It could be one full of sweetshops, puppies, dinosaurs, or perhaps a place where they are a mermaid. The Wayward Children in Seanan McGuire’s series for teens are those who have found a Door into a world ideally suited to their nature. When they return to the real world, often after being missing for some time, the adults do not believe where they have been. Most of these children want to go back but cannot find their Door again. Parents think they need help in the form of therapy to readjust. The lucky ones end up at Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children.
This is the ninth book in the series and follows on almost seamlessly from Lost In The Moment And Found. That book followed Antsy Ricci, who had found herself in the Shop Where The Lost Things Go. Discovering that she had not been given important information about her talent for finding Doors, she left, and at the end of that book, she arrives at the school.
At the start of Mislaid In Parts Half-Known, Antsy is doing her best to settle in, but she is a nine-year-old in the body of a twelve-year-old, as the Doors she has opened while in the Shop exact a price—three days of her life. When Seraphina, a spoilt brat, discovers that Antsy can find lost things, she tries to glamour Antsy into finding her Door. Her friends, characters that readers of this series will be familiar with, rescue her. They take refuge in Kade’s attic room, but when Seraphina tracks her there, Antsy opens a Door so the six teenagers can escape.
The Door opens into Prism, a Fairyland that Kade visited. He knows the dangers and can steer them away from harm while Antsy finds another Door. The one she finds is her Door, leading back into the Shop Where The Lost Things Go. When she left, she had extracted promises from Vineta, who ran the place before Antsy arrived to help. Vineta was supposed to warn any new helpers of the penalties the Doors exact so they could make their own decisions. Vineta has broken that promise and kept her new helper, Yulia, ignorant of the Price. To make things worse, Vineta has caged Hudson and thrown him through a Door. Hudson is the talking magpie who keeps the accounts for the Shop. The friends travel through a Door in search of Hudson. The world they enter is the one depicted on Robert Hunt’s cover.
There is a lot of charm in this series, as well as jeopardy for the characters. For most of them, making choices is important, especially knowing when it is the right moment to make them. For the Wayward Children, their choices are often life-changing, and, as it says of every Door, they must Be Sure it is right for them. Although it is helpful to track the recurring characters through the books in the series, this and the previous Lost In The Moment And Found make a neat duology.
Pauline Morgan
June 2024
(pub: TorDotCom, 2024. 146 page hardback. Price: $22.99 (US), $30.99 (CAN). ISBN: 978-1-250-84850-6)
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