A very interesting read - I'm not sure if coming to this series in the middle has affected my experience of the work as a whole, but I'm quite interested in reading the first in the series. At times this tale was utterly expected, but I also found myself desperately attached to one of the characters and needing to know what would happen. The ending was all too sudden and I had to scroll back and forth to convince myself that it was indeed the end. I'm torn! Enjoyable, but strange, and I want more.

Just as delightfully atmospheric as the first, Seanan Maguire has reams of imagination to unfurl when it comes to her wayward children

I must admit that I went out and bought a physical copy of this as soon as I could even though I had the ARC - some books just need to feel physical to me, especially when their subject matter is so ethereal.
(Also there are really beautiful illustrations by Rovina Cai!)
I really loved the precursor to this book, Every Heart a Doorway. Seanan McGuire mixes all my favourite childhood stories into new interesting tales with a lot of heart. She sets up this grand tapestry of fairylands that explain and incorporate Alice, Peter Pan and Narnia (at least that is how I read it)
In her world looking for adventure down a rabbit whole or through the wardrobe will set you on a course that will change you forever. How can you ever be the same when you've been through the looking glass?
Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the story of Jack and Jill, siblings that we first encountered in Every Heart a Doorway. This is the story of their journey into the Moors - a very dark fairyland filled with vampires, werewolves, drowned gods and mad scientists.
Their parents have always tried to determine Jack and Jill's personalities - trying to shape each girl into their vision of who they should be. The Moors give them both an opportunity to explore who They want to become.
This is not a sweet fairytale. Its dark, full of heartache and longing - but also beauty. I really want more of this world - I want to meet the werewolf lords and the drowned gods and sirens - but I understand why they are only mentioned and not seen. The best kind of horror is the kind we don't see, the shadows in the periphery.
Seanan Mcguire's language really made this book come alive to me and I'm very very Very much looking forward to the next in the series!

The first Wayward Children book ([book:Every Heart a Doorway|25526296]) introduced readers to a rehab/school for children returning from fantasy worlds. I was looking forward to book 2 to get deeper into their stories. This book does not return there but instead tells the story of what happened to Jack and Jill prior to their time at the home. There are a few other surprises in there coming from western folklore, once you get past the first 1/4 which is mostly the author being preachy about bad parenting. There's something I don't like in McGuire's writing about how she is too present. I can't escape into the world because it's like she's there poking me, making sure I laugh at her jokes and saying, "I see what you did there." It's possible the style is simply not for me.

I've been chewing over how to review this book since I first picked it up weeks ago. I came away from my first reading of Every Heart a Doorway not entirely sure I'd liked it but unable shake the urge to reread it and eager for more. Down Among the Sticks and Bones is similarly brief and haunting.

Anyone who enjoyed Every Heart a Doorway will appreciate this prequel, and anyone curious who hasn't read the first should start there. You don't need any background knowledge to follow Down Among the Sticks and Bones, but it does give away important information that would spoil some reveals in Every Heart a Doorway.

Mild spoilers for both books follow:

Knowing how Jack and Jill end up in Every Heart a Doorway gives the entire book a deeply tragic feel. The contrast between the pre- and post-Moors twins is stark but flows logically, and the world-building is both sparse and evocative. There's nothing extraneous here, and though I might hope for more, it's a refreshing change from bloated sequels valuing page count over flow. My one criticism is that I had hoped the twins' books would include an epilogue with their return to the Moors, and I'm sad that this is probably the last we'll hear of them or their world.

I expect to reread this several times, and I'm even more anxiously awaiting the next installment in the Wayward Children series.

When I listened to the audiobook for Every Heart a Doorway earlier this year, I fell in love with the idea of taking an idea we were all familiar with (children venturing to other worlds by going through doors) and showing their aftermath. In contrast, Down Among Sticks and Bones offers a ‘prequel’, if you will, to Every Heart a Doorway. Rather than the aftermath, we see the making.

Down Among Sticks and Bones centers on twins Jacqueline and Jillian, or Jack and Jill. The story begins before they were born; we see Jack and Jill’s parents, the sort of people they were, illustrating that, maybe, our destinies are in the making before we can ever have a say. Through their upbringing, we witness their childhood and how their parents imposed strict gender roles for their own selfish desires and dreams and largely at Jack and Jill’s expense. (A reoccurring theme in the first half of the book is that adults cannot be trusted. And indeed, they cannot.) At this, Down Among Sticks and Bones briefly explores the harm that parents can unwittingly cause; it is a narrative that is not new but is still all the more heartbreaking. But, that is, until they discover a door.

When reading Every Heart a Doorway, I was curious about the adventure of discovering a door and the process of making a home within the world on the other side. Down Among Sticks and Bones satiated my curiosity, and there was no better world than The Moors, an unforgiving, brutal, and monstrous place. The worldbuilding was fantastic – not only in its construction, but also in its impact on the reader. Being in the Moors, or, reading about Jack and Jill in The Moors, elicited a perpetual sense of dread and promises of foreboding. In such a cold and horrifying place, it may seem strange that Jack and Jill carve a corner of this world for themselves. Did The Moors make Jack and Jill for who they would become, or were they fulfilling their destinies?

Indeed, it is presumably a scary place for children, but it is within the Moors that Jacqueline becomes Jack and Jill becomes Jillian. Reading this, I couldn’t decide whether it was a cruel twist of fate or irony: two children who have been forced into rigid squares of what it means to be, only to discover a place where they can live the life they want, and in ways that were unexpected but also made complete sense. Suffice it to say, the characterizations of the story were fantastic. Despite the story’s short length, McGuire’s characters may seem like caricatures – the ‘mad scientist’, the evil vampire lord, the terrified townspeople. However, as the story progresses, each character reveals more of themselves beyond what is on the surface: that, despite the roles they place, the characters are capable of empathy, justice, betrayal, and love. You may not find thoroughly developed characters, with the exception of Jack, but you will find very interesting ones.

While Every Heart a Doorway was, at times, whimsical with hints of mystery and horror, Down Among Sticks and Bones is very dark, brutal, and, in a way, very sad. Nonetheless, Down Among Sticks and Bones is a fantastic novella, a great addition to the Wayward Children series and universe.

So Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones make up books #1 and #2 of McGuire’s Wayward Children series. While I do recommend reading them back-to-back, I will warn you that you will want more, and you will be disappointed because the next book won’t be out til 2018. Sorry. Don’t blame me, blame Seanan McGuire.

It takes mad skills to write something short. Writers, when left unchecked, could very well go on forever. Just ask the 1,200 page manuscript that I’ve got shoved under my bed. I’d go back and look at it one of these days, but my cat peed on it, and I don’t have the heart to throw it out so it just sits there in a grocery bag. Anyway! You ever notice how sequels often get steadily longer than books 1 and 2? Like Harry Potter, you can see the progression on your bookshelf, from Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone to Deathly Hallows the books go from “reasonable in length” to “did JKR’s editor quit or were the publishers just being very indulgent?” Same with another one of my favorite YA series of all time, Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy - A Great and Terrible Beauty was a reasonable length. The Sweet Far Thing gave me wrist damage from holding it up for too long. And no, I haven’t forgotten about you, A Song of Ice and Fire. Winds of Winter is going to be 2,000 pages long, isn’t it?

Going on and on forever and ever and ever is easy. Getting a complete story with well-developed characters, an interesting plot and good writing in under 200 pages is hard. Writing a good short story or novella seems nigh impossible. Emphasis here on the good, there are tons of short stories and novellas out there that are bland and totally forgettable. To create one that stick with you, that’s amazing. And Seanan McGuire has done it twice in a row. What sort of magic powers does she have access to (and could she maybe share them with the rest of us)?

Every Heart a Doorway is essentially a deconstruction of the Portal Fantasy genre. It asks what would happen to someone who went through a doorway to another world but then came back? Down Among the Sticks and Bones is a prequel to Every Heart, chronicling the journey of Jack and Jill, whom we meet in Every Heart. Jack and Jill spent years in a Hammer Horror inspired world of vampires and Doctor Frankensteins, and their time there changed them. A lot. The changes are hinted at in Every Heart, so Sticks and Bones provides us with a lot of answers. Hence, why I recommend reading them back to back.

I’ll admit I had a harder time getting into Every Heart a Doorway than I did Down Among the Sticks and Bones, but I think a lot of it had to do with adjusting to McGuire’s writing style. Short books rely on a lot of tell-not-show narration and sometimes it takes me some time to tell my brain to stop asking questions and just go with the story.These are two amazing and beautifully written novels, so…uh…go read them? I dunno if you will, but I’m going to tell you to anyway. I mean, this book-review-blog-thing is basically just me shouting into the internet void anyway, but hey, these were good books, so why not shout that fact at the internet…

I went into this with low expectations, if only because, of all the characters in Every Heart A Doorway, Jack and Jill's world interested me the least; but I thoroughly enjoyed this tale, and recommend it highly. It stands alone, but read the first one anyway because it's brilliant.

Rating: 4 stars

I love that this series is basically short and fairly quick reads. But don't think that means they don't pack a punch; they still manage to fit a lot of action, adventure, and development into such a limited number of pages.

This book really does explore and bring about an interesting discussion on gender norms, which is nice. You have more of a girly girl and then a tom boy, and it is perfectly acceptable to be either/or or a blend of the two.

I will say that having this book contain several time jumps was frustrating...in the sense that I was enjoying myself and would have liked to have more with the story. Still, the adventures of Jack and Jill was an entertaining one.

Now, the reason why this review also works for my celebration of GLBT book month is that there is a little bit of a lesbian romance. Also, the first book of the series--Every Heart a Doorway--follows a main character who is aesexual. So there's some decent representation in these books.

I like that we are getting more information on the mythos of this world...er technically worlds. This is why portal fantasy can get really interesting; there are so many possibilities and such.

And I've also heard that there are more books in the series to come, at least a third and fourth, with the possibility of more if they do well. I'm looking forward to following the adventures of some of the other characters.

One of the best novellas I have ever read. If you enjoy fairytales, it is a must.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire is a prequel novella to the wonderful Every Heart a Doorway, which I read last year. The two novellas stand alone entirely, aside from being set in the same world. Having read Every Heart a Doorway first, I had some notion of where the protagonists of Down Among the Sticks and Bones would end up, but not exactly how they got there.

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first…

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.

Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got.

They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.

They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.

Part of the initial premise for this story, aside from the portal fantasy aspect, is that their parents decide, before getting to know them at all, what kind of children they'll be. Instead of allowing them to choose their interests, they have interests thrust upon them. And it is horrific. Horrific enough that when they find themselves in a world of vampires, necromancer science and werewolves, both of them would prefer to stay than go home.

I admit it took me a little bit of reading to really remember Jack and Jill from Every Heart a Doorway (and even now I'm still a little hazy, without having reread it), and before I remembered what I already knew of their story, I was half expecting this to be a trans narrative. It is not. It is a story about how to be a girl, and how there's no wrong way to do so.

Despite being about siblings called Jack and Jill, there's not much of the nursery rhyme in this portal fantasy. It's fantastical and bleak and grim and wonderful. This did not stop the nursery rhyme from running through my head every so often while I was reading, so beware. ;-p

I loved Every Heart a Doorway and I loved Down Among the Sticks and Bones almost as much. I will be happily reading any further stories McGuire writes in this world (a third novella has already been announced, whoo!). I highly recommend it to all fans of fantasy, especially portal fantasy.

5 / 5 stars

First published: June 2017, Tor.com
Series: Wayward Children, second published but standalone
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via Netgalley

The draw for me with the previous book "Every Heart a Doorway" is that it brought new life to the well known portal fantasy story that we're all familiar with. I feel like this sequel missed a lot of the things that I really loved about the first one, and instead was simply another story about kids going through a portal. Don't get me wrong, the world is still magical, just maybe not as magical as the first.

Dark and intoxicating like wine, bloody and satisfying like steak. Absolutely loved this dark little twisted fairy tale and all of it's observations of human nature.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones is a standalone story set prior to the events of author Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway (review). Twins Jacqueline (Jack) and Jillian (Jill) are raised to fit perfectly within the boxes their parents select for them — looks, clothing, and behavior are all meticulously regimented. When they climb through a portal into an unknown world, they leave the rigidity of their past behind them and seek a chance to start anew. Vampires, mad scientists, and romances abound!

McGuire employs an inviting and clean prose, through which she can clearly communicate the cruel nature of Jack and Jill’s individual situations. She makes you feel that being plopped into a dangerous world is a welcome respite for what the twins were coming from.

In the novella format, it’s tough to fit worldbuilding, character development, and a solid story together effectively. Here, the characterization of Jack and Jill is excellent, the worldbuilding of the Moors (the creepy portal land) is strong, but the overall story left me wanting. The sequence of plot events spans several years but skips by very quickly, never lingering long enough for each event to have the intended impact. I had similar feelings when reading Every Heart a Doorway — an enjoyable read built from a fun idea, but with a story that I never fully connected with.

Even better than the first book! A detailed look at the world of the moors and a dark fantasy coming of age story

A prequel featuring more of Jack & Jill's story, two characgters from Seanan McGuire's first book in this universe, "Every Heart a Doorway." Very disturbing in the way that the first book was, and doesn't really change my mind regarding how I felt about either character based on that first book.

Wow! I don't usually like prequels, but this was something else. Bleak, stark, words chosen carefully, I loved this book. I even forgot what the inevitable ending was, and had to re-read Every Heart an Open Doorway. So good.