NEW SERIES! Lila Bowen: THE SHADOW SERIES

Author:  Lila Bowen (pseudonym for Delilah Dawson)
Series:  THE SHADOW
Plot Type:  Fantasy 
Ratings:  Violence—7; Sensuality—2; Humor—2 
Publisher and Titles:  Orbit
          Wake of Vultures (e-book, audio, and hardcover—10/2015; paperback—9/2016)

          Conspiracy of Ravens (e-book and hardcover—10/2016)

          WORLD-BUILDING AND AUTHOR INFO           

     If you are as sick as I am of the cookie-cutter über-alpha heroes and spunky-but-submissive heroines of urban fantasy—all gorgeous, leather-clad, bad-ass look-alikes—you'll probably welcome this fresh and compelling series as much as I do. Bowen sets the series in a weird and fantastical American Old West in the 1870s and describes it as Lonesome Dove meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Already I'm fascinated. (NOTE: In my humble opinion, Lonesome Dove is the best TV mini-series ever televised as well as being one of my top-ten favorite novels of all time)

     On Bowen's web site, she states, "I believe in this story enough to offend people and risk failure, and that’s enormously empowering. If you recognize that the world is full of heroes who don’t fit into neat, normal little boxes, you’ll dig it. If you love Westerns but wish women in that era could be more than slaves and whores, you’ll dig it. If you’ve ever had someone look at you and tell you that you don’t deserve the destiny you crave because of what you look like or how you dress or who you love, and you’ve wanted to flip a table on them and ride off into the sunset, you’ll dig it. Wake of Vultures is all about bucking the binary.”

     The series is set in an alternate Old West called the Durango Territory, which basically includes present-day Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado. According to the map at the beginning of the book, there are a handful of Indian villages and white settlements scattered across this arid land. There are also areas marked with spooky labels like minotaur herds, giant Gila monsters, javelina tribes, chupacabra territory, and sand wyrms—among others. So, from the very beginning we know that this is a tale of humans co-habitating with monsters of all kinds. But in this mythology, humans see only the human or normal animal forms of the supernatural beasties until they actually kill one of them. Then they are faced with the chilling reality that their world is filled with creatures with fangs, wings, and/or claws who hide their ferocity and carnivorous nature behind "normal" facades.

     In Bowen's Author's Note at the end of the first book, she explains how she came up with place names and tweaked history to create the fantasy elements of her mythology. Here, she explains her commitment to respecting diversity as she describes the series heroine, Nettie Lonesome. "She's written as a Black Indian, with her tribe most likely Comanche. The terms Injun and Indian have been used throughout the book not as a slur but as a reflection of the language of the time…Raised in the way she was, Nettie would've known no other way to refer to these people…When Nettie arrived in my imagination, fully formed and thoroughly, unapologetically herself, I was intimidated by the thought of writing a half-black, half-Comanche heroine raised in unspoken slavery who self-identifies as a man and is attracted to both men and women." The author goes on to say that people like Nettie have existed all through human history, but have been forced to hide their true selves "and play along with the laws and morality of their times." 

     Although Nettie's confusion about her sexuality runs as an undercurrent throughout the first book, it never detracts from Nettie's adventure-filled journey through the harsh world in which she finds herself. In fact, she first disguises herself as a man solely for her own personal safety and so that she can get a job as a wrangler on a nearby ranch. As a woman, she would have been expected to stay home and tend to the needs of her adoptive parents (aka slave owners) and would have suffered from the unwanted attentions of men who wanted her for their own base reasons. Nettie is a smart young woman, and she knows that becoming a man will keep her alive and free. But then, things get more complicated.

     Under her Delilah Dawson name, Bowen shook up the paranormal genre with her weirdly romantic steampunk series, BLUD. Click HERE to read my review of that series, and click HERE for a review of a BLUD novella in the Three Slices anthology. In a somewhat morbid, but humorous, twist, the wild western plains of THE SHADOW are overrun with tasty, but blood-thirsty, fanged jackrabbits who must be cousins of the ferocious, carnivorous bunnies of BLUD.

     Wake of Vultures won 4.5 stars as a Top Pick for RT Book Reviews as well as being selected as the best fantasy novel of 2015 in the RT Reviewers' Choice Awards. Click HERE to see all of RT's 2015 award winners. 

                        NOVEL 1:  Wake of Vultures                          

PUBLISHER'S BLURB: 

     A rich, dark fantasy of destiny, death, and the supernatural world hiding beneath the surface: Wake of Vultures is the first novel of the Shadow series and introduces Nettie Lonesome, who is much more than she seems. 

     Nettie lives in a land of hard people and hard ground dusted with sand. She’s a half-breed who dresses like a boy, raised by folks who don’t call her a slave but use her like one. She knows of nothing else. That is, until the day a stranger attacks her. When nothing, not even a sickle to the eye can stop him, Nettie stabs him through the heart with a chunk of wood, and he turns into black sand. And just like that, Nettie can "see." But her new-found sight is a blessing and a curse. Even if she doesn’t understand what’s under her own skin, she can sense what everyone else is hiding—at least physically. The world is full of evil, and now she knows the source of all the sand in the desert. Haunted by the spirits, Nettie has no choice but to set out on a quest that might lead her to her true kin…if the monsters along the way don’t kill her first. 

    Monsters, magic and the supernatural combine in this epic debut where a young woman must defeat the evil hiding beneath the surface. Nettie Lonesome dreams of a better life than toiling as a slave in the sandy desert. But late one night, a stranger attacks her—and Nettie wins more than the fight. 

     Now she's got everything she ever wanted: friends, a good horse, and a better gun. But if she can't kill the thing haunting her nightmares and stealing children across the prairie, she'll lose it all—and never find out what happened to her real family. The Shadow will begin a journey that leads her to the darkest chambers of the heart—if only she can survive.

MY REVIEW: 

     As the first novel opens, Nettie is living a slave-like existence on a run-down ranch in an isolated town named Gloomy Bluebird, named after the single bluebird first seen (and shot down) by one of the earliest residents. (The town's name is just one of the Lonesome Dove Easter eggs scattered throughout this novel.) Nettie's parents/owners found her abandoned in the desert when she was an infant, and she has been under their abusive control ever since. Conditions are primitive; the weather is harsh; and the monsters are always hovering (although the white settlers blame the frequent violent deaths on the Indians, and the Indians blame them on the Durango Rangers).

     The story takes place over a period of about two weeks during which Nettie runs away from home and becomes a wrangler and bronc-buster at a neighboring ranch, taken under the wing of a kindly cowboy named Monty who has a lot of the qualities of Gus in Lonesome Dove. One day, the cowboys rescue an Indian woman they find screaming in the desert. She keeps muttering that the Pia Mupitsi (aka Big Cannibal Owl, a cautionary tale told to Comanche children) came and took her child and all of the other children of her village. Before dying, the woman warns Nettie that she must hunt down and kill the Cannibal Owl before the next new moon. If Nettie fails to do this, the woman and her sleek, black water horse (a kelpie) will haunt her for the rest her life.

     Circumstances soon force Nettie to flee from the ranch, so she follows the ghost of the Indian woman, who appears periodically, always pointing west. As Nettie makes her westward journey to her inevitable showdown with the Cannibal Owl, she meets up with a pair of coyote shape shifters, a company of rangers, a man from her past, and quite a few monsters, including a wake of harpies and a pack of werewolves (who, in this mythology, are definitely NOT the usual tough-but-sexy men/shifters with hearts of gold that we find in most paranormal novels). Soon, Nettie's mantra becomes, "I'm a Durango Ranger. I kill what needs to die."

     As Nettie learns how to fight and kill the monsters, she must also deal with her personal issues. She wants to know more about her real parents and why they left her to die in the desert. She also has to figure out exactly who she is. Is she Nettie Lonesome, a one-time slave, or is she Ranger Rhett Hennessy, the new name she made up when she joined the rangers? Is she a woman who truly wants to be a man, or is her male identity just a convenient disguise? Why do three different people (one woman and two men, all in their late teens or early twenties) give her strange feelings when she is near any one of them, making "all sorts of inside organs flip around like a grasshopper in a skillet" and causing her to her tremble "like a new colt"? Where did she get the new powers that develop unexpectedly near the end of the book? Nettie/Rhett has a lot to figure out about her future life, but by the end, she's sure that she has left her beaten-down slave identity far behind: "The world was not a place of black and white, night and day. It was shades of gray and shadows, dusk and dawn, in-between moments and shifting sands, And somehow, knowing that nothing was permanent or real made it easier for Nettie to slip into her own skin. For the first time, she stopped trying to be something else and accepted that what she was was as real and fine as what anybody else was."

     Although the "be who you want to be" theme gets a bit preachy at times, the author wraps it up in such a great story that I'm willing to give that a pass. Nettie is such a great character—a doggedly pragmatic young woman who grapples with gender issues in a most realistic manner while learning to defend herself and find a way to live free in a gritty, hard-bitten, unforgiving world. Bowen says that she based the landscape of Durango on the terrain photographed so beautifully in the TV mini-series, Lonesome Dove, and she captures those hot, barren, treeless plains perfectly. This is a solid beginning to—potentially—a great series. Click HERE to read or listen to an excerpt from Wake of Vultures by clicking on the cover art or the "Liston" icon on the novel's Amazon.com page. Click HERE to read the 4.5-star review of this novel in RT Book Reviews.

                        NOVEL 2:  Conspiracy of Ravens                          
PUBLISHER'S BLURB:

     Conspiracy of Ravens continues the exciting journey begun in Wake of Vultures as Nettie Lonesome discovers that she, and the world, are more than what they seem. Monsters, magic and the supernatural combine in this sequel to Wake of Vultures, in which a young woman must defeat the evil hiding beneath the surface.

     Nettie Lonesome made a leap—not knowing what she'd become. But now the destiny of the Shadow is calling. A powerful alchemist is leaving a trail of dead across the prairie. And the Shadow must face the ultimate challenge: side with her friends and the badge on her chest or take off alone on the dangerous mission pulling her inexorably toward the fight of her life.

     When it comes to monsters and men, the world isn't black and white. What good are two wings and a gun when your enemy can command a conspiracy of ravens? 

MY REVIEW: 

I will upload my review of Conspiracy of Ravens to this space on or near the publishing date of this novel.

UPDATE! Carol Berg: SANCTUARY SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Carol Berg's SANCTUARY SERIES with a review of Ash and Silver, the second book in the series. 

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review.

Ashlyn Chase: BOSTON DRAGONS SERIES

Author:  Ashlyn Chase 
Series:  BOSTON DRAGONS
Plot Type: Paranormal Chick Lit (CH) mixed with Soul Mate Romance (SMR) 
Ratings:  Violence—2; Sensuality—4; Humor—3 (but trying for 4) 

Publisher and Titles: Sourcebooks Casablanca

          I Dream of Dragons (4/2016)
          My Wild Irish Dragon (9/2016)

          Never Dare a Dragon (TBA)

This ongoing post was revised and updated on 9/16/2016 to include a review of My Wild Irish Dragon, the second novel in this series. That review appears first, followed by an overview of the world-building and a review of the first novel.

                   NOVEL 2:  My Wild Irish Dragon                     

PUBLISHER'S BLURB: 

ONE JOB OPENING, 
TWO SHIFTERS APPLY...
SPARKS FLY: 

Dragon shifter Chloe Arish is hell-bent on becoming a Boston firefighter. She uses her Irish charm and fake documents to score an interview, knowing she has to work every bit as hard as a man-harder if she wants their respect.

Born into a legendary Boston firefighting family, phoenix shifter Ryan Fiero can't possibly let someone best him on the training course or the job. He'd never hear the end of it. When a feisty new recruit comes along who's determined to do just that, Ryan plots to kick her out—until their sizzling chemistry turns explosive.

MY REVIEW: 
     Once again Chase presents us with a story filled with non-shifting dragons who remain in their human form 99% of the time. And once again, I wonder why she calls this series BOSTON DRAGONS when we never really see any dragons. In this novel, the heroine shifts only once near the end of the story, and even then, we don't get much of a description. Her hero is a phoenix—another non-shifting shifter—who takes his bird form briefly at the end of the book. Ashley includes a few more descriptive details for him, but not nearly enough. Seventy per cent of the way into the story, we get this: “A bird about the size of a hawk emerged from the pile of ash…Yellow and orange feathers appeared as the bird flapped its wings and hovered in front of her. Its eyes glowed white hot and glittered—like diamonds. Then the creature turned and flew out the giant hole in the side of the building.” Yep…that’s all we get, from beginning to end. So my question remains: Why bother to make these characters shifters with supernatural abilities if you aren't going to use those traits as elements of the plot?

     The publisher's blurb (above) pretty much sums up the plot. Chloe (sister of book one's Rory and Shannon) has an immediate love-hate chemistry with Ryan. The two go through a brief period of sardonic sniping and flaky friction before they fall completely in lust and become a couple, sneaking away for kisses and hotel-room trysts to keep their fire-fighting colleagues from learning about their romantic relationship. Although Chase includes a few fire-fighting scenes, these are usually quite brief and are only incidental to the romance. 

     It's a mystery to me why Chase would write about a fire-fighting dragon and a phoenix and then spend most of her story-telling ink on their all-too-familiar relationship scenes: awkward dialogue, sit-com family scenes, silly situations with the Irish cousins, and a few graphic bedroom scenes, which—I assume—must be the main attraction. Implausibly, even though Chloe is a thousand years old, she is still a virgin. It's as if Chase included every single overdone paranormal romance trope that she could stuff into the story. 

     And here is one more improbable story element: In this mythology, Mother Nature (aka Gaia) is supposed to rule over all of the paranormals on Earth, but she has never bothered to introduce herself to the Fiero family...not until Chloe gets romantically involved with Ryan, one of their seven fire-fighting sons. If you have read Chase's series, you'll know that Gaia pops in and out of the other paranormals' lives at will, making and enforcing all kinds of stringent rules and forcing the characters into many unwilling compromises. So, why in the world has she allowed a family of phoenixes to live in Boston for centuries with absolutely no restrictions and with no knowledge that she even exists? This major anomaly is never explained.

     The plot has a number of other weaknesses, mostly story lines that are briefly introduced and then disappear (e.g., a fortune teller's prophecy that never really pans out, a misogynistic fire fighter who suddenly becomes Chloe's biggest fan, a parrot-sitting job for Chloe that is completely unconnected with any part of the plot), but these are the least of the book's problems. 

     I have read and reviewed the first two books of this series, but I will not be reviewing any more of them, although I will continue to post new titles and publisher's blurbs as they are made available. 

     Click HERE to read or listen to an excerpt from My Wild Irish Dragon on its Amazon.com page where you can click on the cover art (for print) or the "Listen" icon (for audio). 

FULL DISCLOSURE: My review of My Wild Irish Dragon is based on an electronic advance reading copy (ARC) of the book that I received from the publisher through NetGalley. I received no promotional or monetary rewards, and the opinions in this review are strictly my own.

                        WORLD-BUILDING                          

     This series takes place in the same world as two of Chase's previous series: STRANGE NEIGHBORS (SN) and FLIRTING WITH FANGS (FWF). To read an overview of the world-building and my reviews of the novels in those series, just click on the pink-link series titles above. Click HERE to go to a page on Chase's web site that contains the cover art and publisher's blurbs for all six books in the SN and FWF series. Click HERE to go to Chase's blog.

     The world-building is so simple that I don't need to go into much detail. The series is set in present-day Boston in a world in which supernaturals live amongst unknowing humans. Mother Nature (aka Gaia) is the most powerful supernatural of them all—a cranky, willful, impatient taskmaster of a goddess who constantly pops in to interfere with characters' lives. Her mantra is, "Do what I tell you and don't break the rules, even if I fail to tell you what the rules are."

     In the previous two series, the supernaturals included witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and a single dragon. In this series, more dragons travel to Boston, and they are the romantic leads in these novels.

                       NOVEL 1:  I Dream of Dragons                        

PUBLISHER'S BLURB: 

THE HEAT IS ON: 
When Rory Arish and his two fiery dragon siblings are driven out of their ancestral Irish home, it seems their luck has run out-until they arrive in Boston and find a paranormal-friendly apartment building. Finally, Rory has a place to call home. There's only one problem: Rory's new lair has simultaneously been rented to an infuriating woman who is as stubborn as she is beautiful and will not leave 'her' apartment matter how steamed he may be.

AND SPARKS FLY: 
Amber McNally is a down-on-her-luck flight attendant. She needs this apartment, and not even a fire-breathing dragon with his Irish charm and scorching good looks is going to scare her away. Holing up in their respective corners, a battle of wills ensues. Who will be the first to blink...or give in to their off-the-charts chemistry and decide to make this unorthodox living arrangement a little more permanent? 

MY REVIEW: 
     So…this is a series about dragons. But my very first question for the author is this: Why did you place a total of seven dragons in this book, but then keep them all in human form through 99% of the story? Even in the brief scene at the very end in which two of them (both minor characters) have a relatively fire-free fight in dragon form, Chase provides very few descriptive details. For most of the book, the "dragons" are all human all the time, except for a few times when a faint swirl of smoke escapes through their noses if they get upset about something. Readers who are looking for some fiery, up-in-the-air dragon action will be very disappointed.

     Unfortunately, this major design flaw is just the beginning of a series of weak spots. The first few chapters bounce back and forth haphazardly between three dragon siblings in the village of Ballyhoo, Ireland, and a human woman named Amber McNally, a flight attendant who is recruited into the employ of Mother Nature as a modern muse—the muse of air travel. In both mythology and modern usage, a muse is a goddess or power that inspires an artist or a poet or some other creative person. In actuality, Amber is a guardian, not a muse. Whenever she hears a pilot calling "Mayday," she must use her new teleporting skills to put herself into the plane and keep the plane from crashing by speaking calm advice into the pilot's mind.

     The Irish dragon trio is made up of elder brother, Rory Arish and his two sisters, Chloe and Shannon. They live in the caretaker's house on rocky, oceanfront land owned by their family for thousands of years. In fact, all three of these characters are at least one thousand years of age. Behind their small house lies their crumbling family castle, hidden from human eyes by the magic of three local leprechauns.

     As the story opens, the leprechauns accuse the Arish dragons of stealing their gold. Even though the dragons deny committing the crime, the leprechauns throw them out of Ireland, and the siblings find themselves transported magically to a fishing boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually, they land in Boston and look for rooms at the paranormal apartment house that is the center of activity in Chase's SN series. After meeting Bliss and Brandee and their husbands (all from FWF), Amber, too, ends up at the paranormal apartment house.

     Due to a mix-up, Rory and Amber are assigned to the same tiny apartment—the last one available, so they decide to follow the "possession is nine-tenths of the law" rule. Each claims half the space with the primary rule being that the first one to leave the apartment loses it to the other. That puts the two in close contact 24/7, and even though they dislike each other, it is immediately obvious that they will soon fall in lust/love. The "possession" rule means that Amber must somehow teleport in and out of the apartment in response to "Mayday" calls for help without letting Rory know that she is gone.

     Is this enough plot for you? Well—ready or not—there's much more. It seems that one of the leprechauns is a dragon-hating crook. Also, Rory and his sisters have three black-sheep, greedy cousins who want to take over the Arish castle and all of the treasure it holds. Additionally, Shannon has a fiancé back in Ireland who comes to Boston to track her down. Plus, Chad (the ghost from SN) is up to his usual shenanigans. And one more thing: Bliss is nine months pregnant, so you know from the start that a birth will take place at some point before this convoluted story ends. You can imagine that the plot jumps all over the place from story line to story line as Chase desperately tries to keep all of the plot balls in the air at the same time.

     And there is one more problem—one that I raised about Chase's FWF series. All of the Irish villagers are portrayed as stereotypical Irishmen: hard-drinking, constantly brawling, lazy, easily led, red-haired, etc. Chase used Italian stereotypes in one of the FWF novels, and these Irish tropes are just as offensive.

     All in all, this series is on a par (sub-par) with the other two series: one-dimensional characters, implausible events, a hopscotch plot, a weak romance, and stilted dialogue with awkward attempts at humor. For some hard-to-understand reason, RT Book Reviews liked the dialogue much more than I did and gave this book four stars. Click HERE to get a second opinion by reading that review. Click HERE to read or listen to an excerpt from I Dream of Dragons on its Amazon.com page where you can click on the cover art (for print) or the "Listen" icon (for audio). 

FULL DISCLOSURE: My review of I Dream of Dragons is based on an electronic advance reading copy (ARC) of the book that I received from the publisher through NetGalley. I received no promotional or monetary rewards, and the opinions in this review are strictly my own.

Romance Novel Cover Models: A Behind-the-Scenes Look

Life as a Romance Novel Cover Model

     If you have ever attended the annual RT Book Lovers Convention, you probably noticed (or were part of) a long line of enthusiastic women lining up to have their pictures taken with one or more of the virile romance novel cover models who stare moodily out at you from hundreds—perhaps thousands—of novels in every romance sub-genre (including paranormal romance).

  

Jason Aaron Baca
as Michael

     This year's RT Con will be held in Las Vegas from April 12th through April 17th. Read more about it by clicking HERE or HERE. If you go, you might want to attend the "Kickass Cowboys, Cops, and Kisses" session featuring nine western and law enforcement romance authors. The session includes an hour of photo booth time with their hunky male cover models. And then there is the first annual contest to determine America's Next Top Cover Model, in which some handsome unknowns strut their stuff on stage, competing to win an appearance on the cover of an upcoming romance novel. As the RT Con program advises, "Come ready to clap, hoot and holler." Throughout the convention, you'll see lots of muscular models strutting the halls (usually in pairs—a buddy system for safety in the sometimes overly enthusiastic, largely female crowds).

Pepe Toth as
Damon Black

     But what is day-to-day life like for the models? Are they millionaires who live in posh penthouses in Manhattan or lavish beach houses in Malibu? The answer to that question is a resounding "No!" (with the possible exception of Fabio, but more about him later). This week, the NY Times published a fantastic article entitled "With Romance Novels Booming, Beefcake Sells But Doesn't Pay." (Note: Just click on the pink-link title above to go directly to the article.) The author, Laura M. Holson, takes a look at the experiences of two cover models: Jason Aaron Baca and Pepe Toth (whose covers transform him into Damon Black of Jennifer L. Armentrout's LUX series).

Fabio Lanzoni

     In addition to taking us behind the scenes at a photo shoot, Holson reviews the history of male modeling on romance covers, going all the way back to the 1980s and 1990s, when the fabulous Fabio dominated the paperback book racks with his bulging muscles and massive waves of bleached-blond hair. Eventually, Fabio added romance writing to his list of talents and appeared on the covers of his own books. Back then, cover art was mostly painted by hand, but these days Photoshopping is the key to putting together a perfect male body. Take a head from one photo, a bicep from another, six-pack abs from yet another, and—Voila!—the perfect man in all his glorious sexiness!

     This is a great article with an interesting look at a highly competitive industry. About mid-way through, the author has inserted a fascinating section entitled "The Journey to a Romance Cover," which includes a photograph of Baca in his original pose alongside three different cover mock-ups from which the publisher selected the final cover for Susan Stoker's Saved by a SEAL. The four photos are accompanied by a brief narrative explaining the decision-making process. Who knew that there was so much hard work and strategical planning involved in designing a single paperback cover?

UPDATE: Jennifer Ashley: SHIFTERS UNBOUND SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Jennifer Ashley's SHIFTERS UNBOUND SERIES with reviews of Wild Things (novel 7.75) and White Tiger (novel 8). 

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review.

UPDATE! Benedict Jacka: ALEX VERUS SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Benedict Jacka's ALEX VERUS SERIES with a review of Burned, the seventh novel in the series. 

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review.

New Novella from Seanan McGuire: "Every Heart a Doorway"

Author:  Seanan McGuire  
Title:  "Every Heart a Doorway" 
Plot Type:  Fantasy
Ratings:  Violence—4; Sensuality—2; Humor—2   
Publisher and Titles:  Tor (4/5/2016)

PUBLISHER'S BLURB: 

Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children


No Solicitations


No Visitors


No Quests

     Children have always disappeared under the right conditions: slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere...else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. 

     Nancy tumbled once, but now she's back. The things she's experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West's care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy's arrival marks a change at the Home. There's a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it's up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of things. No matter the cost.

MY REVIEW: 
    Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children gives new meaning to the word "wayward." These children aren't runaways in the usual sense. They didn't pack a bag and sneak off through their bedroom windows to seek better lives. No…they stepped through doorways—portals—into various magical realms. Now they have been sent back to the human world, where no one believes their fantastical tales about candy lands, dancing skeletons, unicorns, goblin kings, vampire masters, and more. In frustration, their parents send them to Eleanor, who promises to rid their children of their delusions. In truth, Eleanor herself was once one of these children. In her case, that magical doorway remains open to her, but she can't enter it until she regains her childhood.

     The story begins as Nancy arrives at the Home. Nancy's doorway took her to the Halls of the Dead, where she perfected her innate talents for silence and stillness and learned to love living in the dark and colorless twilight. As Nancy tearfully explains to her new roommate: "I was going to stay forever, until [the Lord of the Dead] said I had to come back here long enough to be sure. Well, I was sure before I ever left, and I don't know why my door isn't here." As Nancy is introduced to the other children, she learns that all of them live with the hope that they will someday find the doorway that will take them back to the perfect life they were so sad to have been forced to leave—the worlds that felt like home.

     Nancy soon learns more about the magical realms: "Here in the so-called 'real world,' you have north, south, east, and west, right? Those don't work for most of the portal worlds…So we use other words. Nonsense, Logic, Wickedness, and Virtue. There are smaller sub directions, little branches that may or may not go anywhere, but those four are the big ones. Most worlds are either high Nonsense or high Logic, and then they have some degree of Wickedness or Virtue built into their foundations from there." The main difference between the Nonsense and Logic worlds is that Nonsense worlds have no rules, while Logic worlds have strict rules. Breaking a rule in a Logic world is a sure way to get evicted and sent back to the human world.

     As Nancy begins to adjust to her new surroundings, her roommate is gruesomely murdered, followed shortly by the violent death of a second girl. In both cases, the murderer cut away various body parts. At this point, Nancy teams up with three of her new friends to clean up the crime scenes and—hopefully—figure out the identity of the murderer. Warning: the dead bodies are graphically described, so...not for the faint of heart.

     Once again, McGuire has created a fascinating world with quirky characters, dark humor, and a suspenseful plot—all in just 176 pages. Publishers Weekly's review calls the story "a love letter to anyone who's ever felt out of place." For all of the children under Eleanor's care, the portal worlds they yearn for are the only places where they felt accepted unconditionally—where they could be themselves. It's no wonder that they all want to return. I wouldn't mind returning either, so perhaps McGuire will consider turning this world into a series.

     Click HERE to view several illustrated scenes from "Every Heart a Doorway" on Tor.com. Click HERE to go to this novella's Amazon.com page where you can click on the cover art to read a longer excerpt.

     Click HERE to read an interview with McGuire and Tor Senior Editor Lee Harris, who has described the premise of the novella in this way: "Every Heart a Doorway tells the story of what happens after Ever After. When a portal fantasy has ended, and its young protagonist is no longer wanted, where do they go? And how do they cope with the transition back into the 'real' world? It begins almost as a coming-of-age tale, but soon becomes something quite different and unexpected.” In this interview, McGuire discusses the primary themes of the story and the importance that gender identity played in her creation of her characters. 

FULL DISCLOSURE: My review of "Every Heart a Doorway" is based on an electronic advance reading copy (ARC) of the book that I received from the publisher through NetGalley. I received no promotional or monetary rewards, and the opinions in this review are strictly my own.