After reviewing Every Heart a Doorway (Isabelle’s Review & Candyce’s Review) and Down Among the Sticks and Bones, we’re back with the review for the next book. Beneath the Sugar Sky is the third book in the Wayward Children series. Once again, Seanan McGuire brings us an unique book. Keep on reading to find out what we thought of this one!
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.
Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, #3) by Seanan McGuire
Published by Tor.com on 09/01/2018
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 174
Format: eBook
Goodreads
Cover
Candyce Once again, these books have amazing covers! They’re all gorgeous in their own way. I love that when you finish the story the covers seem to make a bit more sense. I definitely see the world we read about in Beneath the Sugar Sky.
Isabelle I 100% agree with Candyce haha. These covers are gorgeous and I love the colors in this one. It also fits the story very well and you can definitely see the world we visit.
Review
Candyce Out of all three books I’ve read in this series so far, Beneath the Sugar Sky was my least favorite of them all. Not that it’s a bad story. When I first started reading, I thought we would be getting Cora’s story. In many ways we do, but not completely.
Cora is a mermaid and her hair is naturally blue and green. It just grows that way. She’s also overweight and that was a good representation in this book. We learn that even though that’s the case, she’s even more fit than a lot of her classmates and kids her age. I think the author handled that well and it was nice to see in a book!
That’s where her story kind of “ends” in Beneath the Sugar Sky, because that’s when Rini comes crashing in the pond looking for her mother. There’s one problem though. Her mother, Sumi, died years ago and that means Rini is starting to disappear. Time is taking her back, because her mother isn’t alive to have her anymore.
I loved this concept of trying to get Sumi back though. Visiting other worlds and seeing all the different rules was really interesting. It was fun to see that the rules work differently in all of the worlds. Some may not make sense to us, but they make sense there. I’m still amazed by the fact the author can think of such interesting and unique worlds.
It’s hard to make sense of the story in this review, because it’s not just about one or two characters like the previous books. Even though I wish we got more of just one story, Beneath the Sugar Sky was an interesting tale and I’m happy it made it possible for us to get Sumi’s story!
Isabelle For me this was also my least favorite book out of the first three. Still a very fun story though! We see some of the characters from the first book but not my favorite character so that was already a tiny bit of a let down (even though I knew that wouldn’t be the case). I was super happy to see some of the other characters and I can’t wait to hopefully read their tale.
It was wonderful meeting Cora. I loved that she was a mermaid and think the representation she brought was amazing. It’s great getting an overweight character that was still fit and healthy. This is not a type of character I read about a lot so it was very refreshing.
We also meet Rini but I didn’t really care for her to be honest. I did like that she brought us a ‘reason’ to bring Sumi back because I really like Sumi and I hated what happened in Every Heart a Doorway. It was also great to visit Sumi’s world. I could never ever go through her door and would hate that world. But it was so much fun to read about it!
Seanan is so talented and I love how she creates all these worlds. I truly wish we could visit a 100 more worlds in her books. For me that combined with the characters is what makes these books so great. Oh and the amazing quotes of course ;). The plot wasn’t amazing in this one but I don’t mind it too much. Once again a very fun installment!
Favorite Quotes
Once again, we have a lot of quotes we liked from this book. Too many to fit in the review, so here’s a look at the quotes we loved.
“Adulthood brings limitations like gravity and linear space and the idea that bedtime is a real thing, and not an artificially imposed curfew.”
“Sometimes I think that’s part of what we do wrong. We try to make things make sense, even when they’re never going to.”
“There’s always more than one way to find something out. People only say there’s only one way when they want an excuse to do something incredibly stupid without getting called on it.”
“We’re all puzzle boxes, skeleton and skin, soul and shadow.”
“Cheating was always a matter of perspective, and of who was giving out the grades.”
Once again, Seanan McGuire created something unique is less than 200 pages. We’re still amazed by this! We both can’t wait to read In An Absent Dream, so keep an eye out for the review of this one soon. If you’ve read any of the books in this series, what do you think? We’d love to hear from you.
