Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire

I read this book at four in the morning while suffering a bout of insomnia. And, honestly, that felt like an appropriate time to read it, because this book is...weird. Not bad-weird. Just...weird. It had an almost dreamlike, surreal quality to it.

I liked it, though.

Be advised that this book does carry trigger warnings for violence, gore, mentions of sexual activity, and transphobia. The transphobia is called out and shown as a bad thing, but it is present.

The story follows the residents of Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, which is partially a boarding school but mostly a sanctuary for teenagers who have traveled to other worlds and long to go back. The principal character is Nancy, who visited a land of the dead.

It’s not long after Nancy arrives at the Home that things start going wrong. Along with her fellow students, Nancy tries to unravel what’s going on, before more people are hurt or the school is forced to close.

It was an entertaining take on what happens to characters after they come back from their fantasy adventures. A lot of portal fantasy that I've read has an air of “happily ever after” once the protagonist comes home, and it’s always hard not to wonder how they cope with our world after that. In Every Heart a Doorway, the answer is...well, not that great. They struggle. They long to return to their individual fantasy worlds, and have to learn how to deal with the knowledge that it might never happen.

That was definitely compelling. I liked that a lot.

Every Heart a Doorway came highly recommended to me as an aspec trans person. The main character is asexual, and one of the major supporting characters is a trans man. That was great to see and I very much liked it. I thought it was done pretty well. The only real quibbles I had were that immediately after coming out to her roommate, the asexual main character is asked about masturbation, and the trans man character is referred to by another character as being “born a girl.” That said, both of the characters saying these things are portrayed as rude and their responses as inappropriate, so wasn’t too huge of an issue for me personally. Your mileage may vary.

Now for what I didn’t like.

[Note: the rest of this review contains spoilers.]

This story hinges on violence against young girls, including a young girl of color. Multiple characters die in graphic ways, and though the deaths are not shown on-page, the fatal wounds are described in relative detail. We don’t get to spend a lot of time with the characters before they’re killed, and we don’t get a great grasp on their stories until after the fact. I’m not inherently opposed to character death, but I have developed great distaste for violence against women and girls, especially women and girls of color, being used for entertainment. There’s a lot of it, and it gets hard to stomach. Especially in a work that doesn’t have a lot of time to add deep characterization, it’s jarring and upsetting to see girls get offed so violently and suddenly.

Overall, I really adored the premise and the worldbuilding, but I feel like there are other, much more engrossing stories that could have been set in this world than “violent murder spree targeting young girls.” That said, I’m definitely interested in reading the next installments in the series, because the premise and worldbuilding were enthralling.

In short, this is one I would recommend to my fellow portal fantasy fans, but it is one I would recommend with caution.

Until next time,
Jenn.

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