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In this book review, Averie trauma dumps about how horribly this book disappointed her.
Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway
By Averie Black
Warning: This review contains spoilers for Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
The world of Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan Mcguire is strange, yet alluring. It has a huge, juicy concept with striking world-building and tries to jam all of it into a 173 paged novella. Every Heart a Doorway currently has a 3.82 rating on Goodreads, with a little over 94k ratings. The book follows teenager Nancy Whitman as she is introduced to the home for wayward children. The home is for kids who have fallen into their perfect fantasy world and, for one reason or another, were spit back out. It is made to readjust the children back into their original reality as they grieve their true home. However, Nancy’s arrival takes a shocking twist.
“You want to go back, and so you hold on to the habits you learned while you were traveling, because it's better than admitting the journey's over.”
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There is quite an interesting cast of six characters, the main focus being on Nancy and Kade. Nancy’s doorway was in her basement into the land of the dead. It had a Greek mythology undertone with a lot of references to pomegranate and the lord of the dead. Her role in her fantasy world was to be a living statue. Nancy learned how to stay perfectly still, to live with eating very little, and to slow her heartbeat. The lord of the dead sent her back to her original world just to make sure staying in the underworld was what she really wanted. Nancy was quiet and awkward. With such a short novella, she did not have time to have an arc or fully develop into a three-denominational character. She was a fine enough protagonist, but she could have been swapped out with any other quietish person and it would not have made a difference in the plot. Kade was the male lead and he had gone to a world of fairies in a magical woodland setting. Unfortunately, he was thrown back into his original world when he broke one of the kingdom’s rules. Kade had a bit more personality than Nancy. He was sarcastic and flippant, but the main thing that was pointed out about him was that he is attractive. Passage after passage, whenever he came into the scene, his gorgeousness was highlighted.
Meanwhile, four other characters were shoved into the background. Jack and Jill, twin sisters that were sent into a corrupt world where there is a choice of beauty or intelligence, were basically caricatures. Jack was the deadpan science type that does not flinch at dead bodies and speaks in a monotone voice. Jill was the girly girl that sat there batting her eyelashes and looking pretty. Sumi, a hyperactive girl who went to a nonsense world of candy, did not make any sense and was everywhere all the time. This could be excusable, considering where she went. It would make sense that Sumi would have to adapt to survive in such a chaotic world but, then again, she would just bring up uncomfortably sexual topics for no reason. Unfortunately, as soon as Sumi became somewhat of an enjoyable character, the author just killed her off. The last of the cast of characters is Christopher, a boy who went to a land of rainbows and skeletons and can make skeletons dance by playing his magic flute. His personality was nonexistent and he just blended into the melting pot of Kade and Nancy’s identities. When it comes to the characters, they were either two denominational caricatures or as bland as white bread. Like all books, having a category that is lacking in depth can be excused if the rest of the story is solid. Unfortunately, that is not the case here.
“Because hope is a knife that can cut through the foundations of the world...”
This book is under the LGBT tag on Goodreads. However, it falls into the same trap that a lot of LGBT books do, where it struggles to find a natural way to say that the characters are part of the community. Since the book does not have anything to do with relationships or gender, Mcguire tries to find excuses to bring up romance or sex to showcase that she included minorities. It is not done very well. Nancy makes statements that directly say she is not aromantic: ‘“asexual” and “aromantic” were different things. She liked holding hands and trading kisses.” This would suggest she is alloromantic, but then there is another moment later on, where she explains, ‘“I don't want to go on dates with anyone. People are pretty, sure, and I like to look at pretty things, but I don't want to go on a date with a painting.’” Sexuality is fluid especially when it comes to the aroace spectrum but, one moment, she is jealous of other girls around Kade and the next she would never date anybody. At the same time, Kade is immediately introduced as being the ‘trans boy’ who is excluded for his transness, and this is brought up a few times throughout the book. In all fairness, the fact that he is trans plays into the background of his fantasy world of only taking girls, but the amount of times it is brought up makes it seem like the author wants the audience to know just how trans this trans person is. This could have opened up a broader conversation about gender and dived into a character arc for Kade, but he was a static character for the entire novella.
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The first third of Every Heart a Doorway was full of anticipation. Mcguire spent most of her energy building up how the world works-- how different portals open for different kids, the difference between nonsense and logic worlds, and so on. The plot showed no signs of seeping in until they found Sumi– dead. The synonymousness does not give much away about the plot, but what it does describe is nothing like how the book turned out to be. Reading the blurb, it seemed to imply there would be some kind of emotional journey of the characters coming to terms with their reality or perhaps themes of how too much escapism led to them not feeling connected to the things and people around them. Then again, maybe the book would turn into more of an adventure as a set of characters traveled through each of their worlds to take care of their unfinished business. Unfortunately, all of that was just hopeful thinking. After Sumi dies, the book turns into a lukewarm murder mystery. The amount of seething pain this book has caused readers is inconceivable to those who have not read it. As said by Roxanna López, someone who read and reviewed Every Heart a Doorway on Goodreads, “Started interesting but then decayed rapidly.” It was perfectly set up to be the next epic-- a clever spin on the classic tale of a protagonist fighting to get home. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and then there is Every Heart a Doorway, an almost masterpiece. A disappointment.
“It was simply closed to her for the time being, until she could find her way back to childhood.”
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Novellas can be very versatile. Being able to write a whole story in 100ish pages is a skill of its own--a skill that McGuire does not possess. The concept was too big for a novella, which is probably why there are eight-and-a-half more books in the series. The plot feels messy and weirdly paced. She drags on boring scenes too long and skims past important ones. The chapters, which had been around sixteen pages each in the beginning, slowly dwindled to five pages each during the climax. From when the crew found out who the murderer was to the end of the book, there were two chapters: one was five pages long, the other six, and the last chapter was an epilogue. Upon the deaths of multiple of their friends, the main characters show no other emotion other than fear of themselves being next. Does no one care about their dead friends? Is no one undergoing the grieving process? Why are these kids responsible for solving the murders of their classmates? The principal of the home, Eleanor West, decided that the best course of action was to take all of the nonsense kids into her world and the rest of the kids could just stay there and supposedly perish.
What is the logic of this world? The kids can take magic from their adoptive world and bring it back into reality, but this is only ever shown once and is never brought up again. This magic could have been used to find the murderer or to help the kids transition back to the real world, but no. The only time they utilize this is to make a dead girl's skeleton dance. Perhaps, Christopher was the only kid who had brought his magical item back but, considering this is a home for kids kicked out of whimsical worlds, I find it hard to believe that none of them would think to bring a souvenir. Other than the obvious portals into other dimensions, the reality setting of the book seemed based on the normal world. It seems strange that the portals only seem to work one way, as it was shown that anything magical was abnormal. They “...dismissed their memories as delusions, their experiences as fantasy, their lives as some intractable illness.” There is a mixture of creatures from the other worlds bringing humans into their dimension, as shown by Kade being led by fairies who liked to take little girls, and some God-like force that just opens up portals for certain people, as shown by Nancy.
If this is the case, why has this God-like force never opened a portal for someone in the other dimension to reality? It also seems very strange that all of the realities that the kids are either brought to or swallowed by are a perfect fit for them. In a case like Kade’s, where there were creatures that kidnapped him, would there not have been an instance where that child was taken somewhere that was not right for them? Would that also imply that this reality is perfect for no on, which is why no magical creatures are being sent here from other dimensions? In addition, there are no mentions of portal openings from anywhere other than Earth so is it just from Earth to a bunch of other branching realities or a big networked spider web of portals? Rest assured, none of these questions are answered.
“…Boys will be boys is a self fulfilling prophecy. They are too loud on the whole to be easily misplaced or over looked. When they disappear from the home their parents send out search parties to dredge them from swamps or drag them away from frog ponds.”
Though the murder mystery twist was extremely unsavory, it was also just not a very good thriller. There was zero anticipation and it felt like all of the remaining beloved characters had plot armor. This fact is further mocked with the twelfth chapter being titled, “And They All Lived”. People were killed with different missing body parts and that should be exciting but, firstly, only four people actually died and, secondly, it was more like a half-hearted “Oh no” than a terrifying event that the reader should be concerned about. The only good thing that came from the mystery genre shift was the lore. It turned out that innocent girly-girl Jill was the killer and she was stealing the special aspects of each kid which was why they were lured into their world. It was described as a “skeleton key''. Using Sumi’s restless hands, Loriel’s sharp eyes, Lundy’s huge brain, and Seraphina’s striking beauty, Jill hoped to open a portal back to the world that had sucked her in and spit her out. This concept is actually interesting and opens up new possibilities in the world building.
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Though the concept was enough to make any fairytale dreamer's heart bleed, the execution was just horrible. With a surprise genre twist halfway through and characters that were walking pride flags, it does not scratch the itch for a good fantasy. Instead, just reread The Land of Stories series. Chris Colfer deserves it.
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