Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children Series #3)

by Seanan McGuire

Overview

Winner: 2022 Hugo Award for Best Series

A glorious fantasy tale from Seanan McGuire's Alex-award winning Wayward Children series, which began in the Alex, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning, World Fantasy Award finalist, Tiptree Honor List Every Heart a Doorway

Beneath the Sugar Sky, the third book in McGuire's Wayward Children series, returns to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children in a standalone contemporary fantasy for fans of all ages. At this magical boarding school, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the "real" world.

When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let Reality get in the way of her quest – not when she has an entire world to save! (Much more common than one would suppose.)

If she can't find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she will never have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn’t have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away. Good thing the student body is well-acquainted with quests...

A tale of friendship, baking, and derring-do.

Warning: May contain nuts.

The Wayward Children Series

Book 1: Every Heart a Doorway

Book 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Book 3: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Book 4: In an Absent Dream

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765393586
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/09/2018
Series:	Wayward Children Series , #3
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	188,582
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

SEANAN McGUIRE is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award–winning Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, the InCryptid series, and other works. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot. In 2022 she managed the same feat, again!

Editorial Reviews

12/11/2017
McGuire’s delicious third book (after 2017’s Down Among the Sticks and Bones) to feature the teens of Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children—kids who have found doors to fantastical worlds and are desperate to return to them—opens with a girl falling from the sky into a pond on school grounds, causing quite a stir. Rini Onishi has come from a world called Confection to get back her mother, Sumi. Inconveniently, Sumi is dead, and she’ll need to be rebuilt from the bones up so that Rini’s life won’t be undone. Several of the strange children at the home offer to help Rini, but when they get to Confection, they’re captured by the fearsome Queen of Cakes. What follows is a lush, darkly whimsical adventure full of wonders such as a pink soda sea, candy corn fields, and a castle made of gingerbread, all made grim by the characters’ desperation to get Rini’s mother back before it’s too late. Readers will be thrilled to see old friends and meet new ones in this scrumptious tale that emphasizes acceptance, kindness, and the enduring value of friendship. Agent: Diana Fox, Fox Literary. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire is one of the most extraordinary stories I've ever read." — V. E. Schwab, New York Times bestselling author of A Gathering of Shadows

"With Every Heart a Doorway, McGuire has created her own mini-masterpiece of portal fantasy — a jewel of a book that deserves to be shelved with Lewis Carroll's and C. S. Lewis' classics, even as it carves its own precocious space between them." — NPR

"McGuire's lyrical prose makes this novella a rich experience." —Library Journal starred review

"This gothic charmer is a love letter to anyone who's ever felt out of place." — Publishers Weekly

"Seanan McGuire once again demonstrates her intimate knowledge of the human heart in a powerful fable of loss, yearning and damaged children." — Paul Cornell, author of London Falling and Witches of Lychford

"This gothic novel is ideal for fantasy fans who have longed for a world of their own, as well as readers looking for books with diverse casts." —Bookish

“Girl Interrupted meets Grimm's Fairy Tales. Let it in and it will touch your heart and open your mind.” —Geek Syndicate

"The broken doors are open, and you should come and enter. Every Heart a Doorway feels like home." —B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

From the Publisher

★ 2019-11-19
In the third Wayward Children novella, experienced teenage questers who have returned to Earth attempt to rewrite a magical land's past and future.

Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children is for those young people who found a door to a fantastical world and then, inadvertently, often unwillingly, found their way back through it again. Nevertheless, it's a big surprise when one day a portal opens on the grounds of the school itself, dropping a teenage girl from the sky into the turtle pond. It's an even bigger surprise when she identifies herself as Rini, daughter of Sumi—a former student at the school who was murdered before she had any children (Every Heart a Doorway, 2016). But Sumi is/was the destined savior of Confection, a world of baked goods and Nonsense, and a world governed by Nonsense can often be flexible with time and dispense with causality entirely. Can Rini and Sumi's former schoolmates manage to bring Sumi back from the dead and into her rightful place before Rini ceases to exist and the petulant and malicious Queen of Cakes' dominion becomes complete? McGuire has assembled a richly drawn group of adventurers with a complex mix of magical and mundane issues, including a trans young man whose publicly avowed gender identity got him rejected both by the fairyland of Prism and his family of origin on Earth and a young woman emotionally wounded by constant fat-shaming on Earth but whose body type and athleticism served her well as a mermaid in the oceanic depths.

Fully dimensional characterization and a compelling story arc keep this series moving.

Kirkus Reviews

Michelle Dockrey’s smooth narration invites listeners to jump into this third installment of the Wayward Children series just as an unexpected visitor falls right into the turtle pond at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. The visitor, Rini, says she’s the daughter of former student Sumi—a confusing claim, considering that Sumi was murdered without having had children. To reconcile this paradox, several residents of the school embark on a quest to Rini’s home world, the embattled, edible candy-land of Confection. Dockrey ably portrays the confusion and wonder of new student Cora, whose perspective anchors the story, while also deepening the characterizations of Cora’s companions—most notably Rini, who is all high-pitched, petulant insistence. Series fans will savor this tantalizing taste of another world. R.A.H. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2019 - AudioFile