When children’s TV presenter Felix ‘Harry’ Bodie took part in a popular genealogy show, it was with the intention of using the programme to launch his switch to serious drama by focusing on his maternal great-grandfather, a captain of industry and politician. When the show’s researchers dig up an unfortunate criminal history, Harry has no choice but to switch the focus to his grandmother, author of the Underhill children’s fantasy novels, a connection he’d been desperately trying to minimise.

What he didn’t expect was for them to unearth so much information about her mother – a woman who appeared in London from who knows where in 1916, penniless, pregnant and unable to speak English, claiming to be the Queen of Fairyland. The ideas for the Underhill novels came from the stories she told her daughter during the visits allowed by the asylum and her daughter’s foster parents. Far from relaunching his career, Harry’s angry reaction damages what reputation he currently has.

After drowning his sorrows, Harry encounters a strange man loitering outside his house. The next morning, he begins to question his own sanity. Could his great-grandmother’s delusions be hereditary? After all, there was no way that the exceptionally tall man he met the night before could have had horns curling from his hair or have been tottering along on goat’s legs. But when a private investigator tries to tell him that he needs to visit his grandmother’s former home to examine a wardrobe, and then he is kidnapped by a strange group who are convinced Underhill is real, Harry realises that it’s not his sanity that’s at stake – it could actually be his life.

Sadly, And Put Away Childish Things was a miss for me, especially considering that it’s an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel. I found Harry to be not only shallow but thoroughly unlikable, and the supporting characters have very little depth. A decent chunk of the plot seemed completely pointless, as it was essentially ignored after it happened. A firm Tchaikovsky fan, for once his writing didn’t pull me in, leaving me indifferent to how the novel would end. I’m giving it three stars purely because it’s not possible to give two and a half stars. This is not a novel that I’ll be revisiting in the future.

I received an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love Adrian Tchaikovsky, I always find his novels interesting, thought provoking and fun.

And Put Away Childish Things is a short, fun novella about what is basically a nightmarish Narnia/fairyland, called Underhill. We follow a very annoying main protagonist (a British TV actor) being pulled from our world into that world, against his will. Into, in his words, 'A bloody nightmare of epic proportions'.

There are decaying fauns, rotting giant dogs, a nasty Kaiju clown, a dimension-travelling enormous spider, a four-hundred-year-old alchemist kin-vampire, a cult of dangerous stockbrokers obsessed with Underhill, a courageous folklorist and other interesting characters - what more could you want!

I had a few gripes, mostly to do with the protagonist, but I did understand why the author made him the way he is, and he does have a nice character arc.

Overall a very enjoyable, kind of terrifying, thought provoking story!

Adrian Tchaikovksy is probably someone I will confuse with Alastair Reynolds for a long time just because they are both science-fiction authors from the UK and like to write about wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. And Put Away Childish Things is a novella loosely based on the premise “What if Narnia were real and it were terrible?” Except, that’s kind of already been done? I received an eARC of this from NetGalley and publisher Rebellion.

Harry Bodie is an actor for a children’s TV show. He is not beloved. Very few people enjoy his company, and he is resentful that his career has never taken off. His grandmother wrote a series of beloved books called Underhill, which take place in a Narnia-esque world of the same name. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic starts up, Bodie finds himself the target of machinations from several factions, all convinced that Underhill is real and he is the key to accessing it—whether by wardrobe or some other portal.

I was really intrigued by the premise, of course, and excited to read the book, but it never seemed to start, for me? Maybe I’m unfairly comparing it to The Magicians. To be clear, this story is very different from that one—both deconstruct the desirability of Narnia, but one is about young adults eager to take up the practice of magic, and the other is about a washed up TV presenter being reluctantly dragged into interdimensional shenanigans. The stories are almost completely divergent, yet that one thread that they have in common made it difficult for me to put the comparison down.

Bodie is not a likable character, nor is he meant to be, but I don’t like that I don’t like him! Maybe because there just didn’t seem to be anyone to like in the book. I also think the main antagonist, and their goals/plans for Bodie, gets revealed far too late in the story, resulting in a climax and resolution that felt all too rushed.

In the same way, Tchaikovsky dangles little hints of grander things in front of the reader but never explores them. So Snickersnack can move between worlds because she’s got spider powers? OK? Tell me more about these worlds, or potentialities, or how they get manipulated. It’s a very compelling idea and reminiscent of what he explores in Children of Memory, but it doesn’t go very far because of the length of the story. I kept wondering what would have happened if this were novel length—yet at the same time, unlike some novellas and short stories, I have no burning desire to read the novel version of this story.

And Put Away Childish Things has clever ideas and solid writing, as I have come to expect from Tchaikovsky. There’s just nothing specifically that I can grab on to, however, and praise as “this made the story for me.” It’s nonspecific portal fiction, a curious blending of fantasy and science fiction. Good for an afternoon’s distraction? Sure. But not the first thing I would recommend.

Harry Bodie is an actor with some credits to his name; primarily, he’s been keeping afloat by working on a TV children’s program. His grandmother, however, was much more famous: she wrote the popular, beloved Underhill fantasy books for children.

When he goes on a TV show that digs into celebrities’ pasts, it turns up information that his grandmother was born in a mental institution. And his great-grandmother died there. She did, however, get to have visits with her daughter, with whom she shared many stories of Underhill. The poor woman insisted the place was real — and she was its queen.

The newfound attention from the show brings people asking Harry to tell them more about Underhill. He is, after all, the heir to the throne. And they want him to go back.

It’s all absolute nonsense. Of course. But what if it isn’t? And what if it isn’t delightful and always beautiful now? Its citizens are going to ask Harry to pay a high price to return it to its former glory.

And Put Away Childish Things is a smart short fantasy book. It plays on readers’ (and the characters’) familiarity with magical worlds like Narnia to turn it all sideways. It’s a little scary, a bit wonky, and all very clever. Adrian Tchaikovsky mixes a number of cool fantasy and science fiction elements to create an unusual take on familiar “childish things.” I’d never heard of the author or any of his other books, but I’m impressed now.

Harry is a middle-aged TV presenter for a children’s show who is unhappy with his career and his life. His grandmother published a series of children’s books set in the fictional land of Underhill that have quite the following, but he can never seem to do more than barely get by. But when he’s accosted not once but twice by mysterious strangers and begins to have strange visions, a terrible question pops into his mind – what if Underhill is real? And what if it’s not as lovely a place as his grandmother wrote it to be?

I enjoyed having an older protagonist for an adventure of this nature. The author did a great job at writing a main character who wasn’t likeable – Harry’s characterization was well done. Similarly, I enjoyed the author’s writing style and how self-aware the book felt without being obnoxiously so. I did dislike that despite being an older protagonist, Harry had almost no agency throughout the work – maybe this was meant to be part of his character, but it made the whole thing feel a bit too linear and left me wanting more.

The concept of Underhill was interesting, but it was too disconnected from the primary plot. The chapters each included a little excerpt from the children’s books that were written about Underhill to provide some context, but it wasn’t enough to fully flesh out this world. It made it difficult to really care about the inhabitants of Underhill or feel any sort of tension or emotional connection to the entire conflict surrounding it. And unfortunately, that’s where most if not all the conflict of this work stemmed from.

This was an odd but enjoyable read overall – I did want it to have a darker atmosphere to match the darker and cynical tone, but it was still good. My thanks to NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Every person who has read fairy tales and fantasy adventures set in imaginary wonderlands would have, at least once, wished for those worlds to exist in reality. What if those alluring magical landscapes with fantastical creatures were there for real, for ordinary humans to go and have extraordinary experiences? Adrian Tchaikovsky takes this yearning and gives it a few twists that only his prodigious imagination could conjure, and the result is And Put Away Childish Things!

Felix ‘Harry’ Bodie is forty and is struggling to make it big in the entertainment business even after slogging for twenty-five years, and his somewhat successful career as the host of a children’s programme is getting him nowhere. A chance to turn it around, and become famous, comes in the form of an invitation to appear in a celebrity chat show where he could publicise his connection to the author of a reasonably beloved fantasy adventure series. Felix’s grandmother, Magda ‘Mary’ Bodie, was the creator of ‘Underhill’, a Narnia-like imaginary world where the lead characters – siblings James and Jemima from the real world – participate in adventures involving various creatures benign and evil, and come back home in time for tea, and the books are fondly remembered by a few seventy years after their publication. But Felix’s expectations get crushed when the host brings up certain scandalous matters about his grandmother, making Felix lose the little regard he used to have.

The fiasco at the chat show, followed by the spread of a global pandemic, hurts Felix so much that he becomes drunk and delusional; he even sees a character from his granny’s stories – Timon the faun – outside his house, only the faun looks sinister and decaying, entirely unlike the stories. While he struggles to get the terrifying vision off his head, a woman calls Felix and asks him to meet her about Underhill, saying the name peculiarly – as if talking about an actual place. Soon, Felix gets kidnapped by a group of people who believe Underhill to be real, and a couple of murders and a bizarre rescue later, he finds himself inside the fictional land, and his granny’s stories could not have been farther from the ominous reality of Underhill. He learns things that he was better off not knowing and meets people he would rather never meet, and escaping with his sanity, if not his life, intact is going to be a daunting task.

And Put Away Childish Things is yet another hugely imaginative tale full of zany characters, unpredictable twists, amusing dialogues, and nonstop action. Tchaikovsky’s prose is subtly humorous and his descriptions are brilliant. His already proven world-building abilities – and his enduring love for spiders – are on display here too. His characters, on both sides of the boundary between Bodie’s Underhill and the real – what is real, anyway? – world, are superbly rendered. Be it a mega space opera, science fiction, or a fantasy tale, Tchaikovsky’s gifted storytelling prowess never ceases to amaze me, as I am sure it does numerous readers. I had a terrific time reading his latest and would recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy and had, at some point in time, believed in those fantasylands, or simply to everyone.

I would like to thank Solaris / Rebellion Publishing for providing me with a Digital Review Copy of And Put Away Childish Things through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

A clever, irreverent, yet often eerie and haunting take on classic portal fantasy stories like the Chronicles of Narnia (oh, sorry, the other one with the wardrobe). I didn't expect the plot to even mention, much less revolve so thoroughly around, the Covid-19 pandemic, and while I found it initially jarring, it's handled both movingly and, somehow, amusingly. I read this book out loud to my sister over the course of a road trip, and we both laughed aloud several times - plus it kept her awake while driving through the desert late at night, which might not be my usual criteria for reviewing a book, but is a pretty good sign nevertheless.

Seriously, though, And Put Away Childish Things packs so much story into a slim volume, and all of it sly and fun and heartfelt and horrifying at times, making it a must-read for anyone who ever dreamed of stepping through a wardrobe and finding themselves in another world.

Thank you to Solaris for the advance review copy.

Let’s get this straight – Harry Bodie isn’t particularly nice. That said, I began to understand why he was quite so chippy about of the third of the way in. And given the set-up, I don’t think it would have worked so well if he had been entirely likeable right from the start. Because this book was an affectionate parody of all things Narnia – so our main protagonist, Bodie, also undergoes a transformation during the book that helps to give the ending such a very satisfying conclusion. It could have so easily descended into a parody of itself, or the dark humour could have tipped into something darker and a whole lot less amusing. To be honest, I slowed down near the end because I couldn’t bear to see all those poor suffering characters end up being annihilated. And I’m glad to say that doesn’t happen – because while it took me a while to bond with Harry, I immediately lost my heart to poor, bedraggled Timon, the rascally faun.

In common with better written parody, parts of this had me laughing aloud – while some of the later scenes in the Underhill were simply painful to read. In fact, given its length, I was a tad shocked at just how much I’d emotionally invested in this novella – but then, I was one of those children who yearned to find a hidden world at the back of my wardrobe and indeed, I went looking for it on more than one occasion… I appreciated that there wasn’t a scrap of sentimentality within this story and as ever, Tchaikovsky handles the narrative arc, the pacing – and above all that wonderful ending with the technical prowess I’ve come to expect in most of his writing. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this offering and if you ever read the Narnia series and loved it as a child – then, this one comes highly recommended. While I obtained an arc of And Put Away Childish Things from the publisher via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
9/10

This is like Narnia, but make it adult and with science. This short book has a really interesting concept, and I really enjoyed following along to see where the author would take us. And sure, even if the place per se is not so beautiful, since we are talking about a world that is dying, it is an amazing journey, and we get to see fantasy and sci-fi elements mixed so well to work together and create something unique.
Another peculiar thing is that the MC, Harry Bodie is... well, nothing special. He is a small person, and he is quite a sad person, too, since life is not really going as well as he was hoping, and he has some problems. I wasn't really so invested in him, and he is not a nice guy. He is not a bad one, too, but he is not nice. But he is, at least for some part, so relatable. And normal. And real. And so, even if I usually need more investment in the characters to really enjoy a book, in this case, it was not a problem. Partially it's because of the length of the book since it's pretty short, and partially because there are so many other things to focus on that well, in the end, I enjoyed the reading all the same!

Harry Bodie thinks Underhill was invented place and a place only found in his grandmothers popular children’s books but little does he know it’s not only a real place but the residents of that place are tired of waiting for him. This was such a delightful book and I’m not only log the whole premise put found the explanation for Underhill and places like it such a great touch. I hope the author has books like this one because I now want to read more fantasy stories. If you love Fantasy and sci-fi stories then you will definitely love And Put Away Childish Things BY Adrien Chiekoski. I certainly did. I received this book from NetGalley and publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

The beginning of this book was a bit slow for me, but the middle and end were smart, funny and brilliant as all Adrian Tchaikovsky's books are. I consider this author the best contemporary SFF author presently publishing and I want to read all his books with no exception whatsoever!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

"And Put Away Childish Things" is a refreshing take on the portal fantasy genre, featuring a middle-aged protagonist who's struggling to find his place in the world. Aidan Tchaikovsky weaves a clever tale that takes us on a journey into the world of Underhill, the setting of his grandmother's beloved children's books. But the version of Underhill that Harry Bodie encounters is nothing like the delightful world he remembers from the stories.

What I appreciated most about this book was the author's attempt to provide a scientific explanation for the existence of these parallel fantasy worlds. This adds a unique twist to the typical portal fantasy trope, and elevates the story beyond just a fun romp through a magical world.

Tchaikovsky also acknowledges the influence of Narnia on the genre, which is a cute nod to the classics that inspired many of today's fantasy writers. But the similarities end there, as the author takes us on a darker, more mature journey that explores themes of family, responsibility, and sacrifice.

Despite its darker themes, "And Put Away Childish Things" is a fun, fast read for anyone who loves the genre and wants to revisit it as an adult. Tchaikovsky's writing is engaging, and the plot twists keep the reader on their toes. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fresh take on portal fantasy.

This book was everything I wanted it to be. It got off to a slow start but about halfway through it grabbed me and had me turning pages without even realizing. Obvious comparisons to Narnia here, with other elements that have been borrowed from elsewhere, so it's not exactly breaking new ground; however, it still has a unique voice all its own. It's a rather quick read but entirely captivating. Big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a very enjoyable novella and my first exposure to Tchaikovsky. Really looking forward to reading more of his work.

I adore Tchaikovsky's writing. So while this wasn't quite the version of Narnia I'd have preferred (neither is Lewis' by the way), the novella was written very well with life-like characters and a fantastic atmosphere throughout. Highly entertaining and sucking you right in.

Harry (Felix) Bodie starts out as a children’s presenter desperate for further career opportunities and fame. After appearing on a reality tv show (kind of like who do you think you are) he discovers that what he believes about his family isn’t true at all.

After a series of events he finds himself in the magical Narnia-ish world his grandmother had written about. Except this world isn’t a fairytale for children anymore and he, the heir, must find a way to save it.

‘And put the childish things away’ was a fun, short read. I enjoyed the nods to other portal to another world books and the familiar elements that reminded me of children’s books I enjoyed as a kid. The book was a little slow to start and is set during the 2020 uk lockdowns, in a way this made sense as nobody missed Harry when he went missing. Harry was entirely unlikable with only a few redeeming moments, very much a reluctant hero until the very end when he holds on to his ‘saviour destiny’ like a spoiled child who has been told he cannot be the hero after all. Despite this I loved the way the creatures from Underhill were portrayed and I really wish I could go into more detail but I worry it would give spoilers.

What an odd little book this was. It's a 200-page novella that's very unlike anything I've read, and for the first half I just couldn't get into it at all. Then 3/4 of the way through I found myself caring about what was going to happen and could hardly believe it when by the end I was wishing for more. It's set in 2020 England (probably part of why I had trouble getting into it since I've been on such an sff kick) as Covid is just arriving, and has a very snarky tone with an intentionally unlikable (at least initially) adult protagonist who's a purposeless D-list tv celebrity. I appreciated the cleverness and level of voice in the prose throughout, and I think a certain reader might really love this novella all the way through just for that aspect of the writing.

The premise has to do with an alternate reality where a parallel portal fantasy series similar to Narnia existed and was popular, and the main character is the grandson of the author. I don't really want to give away any more, since the plot is zany and part of the fun, but you can probably guess at what turn it takes just by looking at the cover art. Kudos to Tchaikovsky for creating a distinctive character that I thought I would never care about but who undergoes some intriguing growth over the last hundred pages. I loved the creativity on display in the 2nd half, and he definitely got me to laugh out loud a few times too. It's no Ogres and I wouldn't go out of my way to buy the hardcover or break the tbr for it (I'm happy I read it for free as an e-ARC), but if you're a Tchaikovsky completionist like I am at this point then it'll probably be a decent time.

And Put Away the Childish Things is a Narnia inspired portal fantasy that takes a grown up look at the fairytale aspects of it all.

That is what I liked about this rather short novel. This adult look at a (christian) children's story. Because what happens if the kids don't come to play? What happens when the reason for those kids to have to come to this other dimension is sinister? What happens to those who were created for just that reason?

The almost perfect one dimensional side characters with a specific role, these kind of stories create, got a different look. Their mission, their goal in life, didn't come. And what does one have then?

While I'm still not sure I even like Harry (especially at the start), his response to being told and confronted with the fairytale world he always thought his grandmother created. But getting kidnapped by the 'fans' was probably even worse.

I think this is a must read for those of us that would like a more adult look at those fairytales.

Adrian Tchaikovsky borrows a little from C. S. Lewis for his imaginary world of Underhill. Harry Bodie’s grandmother wrote tales about Underhill based on what her mother told her. Harry, who introduces children shows for BBC, doesn’t know that his great grandmother had escaped from that world. There are fanatics who are convinced that the world is quite real, and are willing to kidnap him to get there. Eventually Harry has to face reality And Put Away Childish Things (hard fromRebellion Publishing Ltd.) Unfortunately his great grandmother ran from the world for a reason, and Harry has to face the nightmare. Fun.

A fascinating and compelling bit of writing, I deeply enjoyed this and would love to return to try more of his work in the future!