Light spoiler warning for new character.
I began reading Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series a little more than two years ago in January 2018, when the third book Beneath the Sugar Sky was published (though I didn’t read that installment until later in the year as I was waiting for it to be available through NLS). I adored these quirky, fantastical books that appealed to both my inner child and my adult self. I gave Every Heart a Doorway (#1), Down Among the Sticks and Bones (#2), and In an Absent Dream (#4) five stars. I gave Beneath the Sugar Sky (#3) four. That’s why it makes me a little sad to give the fifth installment Come Tumbling Down three stars. (In my personal rating system, this makes it “a solid read.”)
Come Tumbling Down aims to pick up storylines left hanging in Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones and tie them up. It sees us returning to the Moors, which were explored in book two, and exploring what happened to Jack and Jill when they left Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children abruptly at the end of book one.
This makes Come Tumbling Down the first proper sequel in the series, which I was looking forward to, as I wanted to learn more about the world and its inhabitants more, Getting to see Jack again is undoubtedly my favorite part of this book. The way her OCD is just something that people accept about her, her queerness, and her matter-of-fact personality make me love her, and adore this series even more for having her.
However grateful I am to get to see more of Jack though, in comparison to the other books, this one feels somehow lackluster. It’s no shorter than any of the others in the series and yet, when I finished it I felt like more happened in the other books than in this one. It also didn’t seem to introduce anything new, really. We get to see a briefly touched on part of the world when we meet Gideon, the High Priest in charge of the part of the Moors controlled by the Drowned Gods, but even his presence in the story feels like just a means to an end.
I do love it when all the threads of a story get wrapped up neatly, though, and this book does that very well. To me, it feels sort of like a half step only meant to tie up loose ends and not really a whole story in its own right like the others.
Overall, I did enjoy my time reading it and it was definitely needed to finish up certain characters’ stories. I see that the sixth installment has already been added on Goodreads, with a blurb that suggests we’re getting a new world and new characters, so I am glad that Come Tumbling Down allows us to move forward in this wonderful series not worrying about the fates of characters we love.
★★★☆☆
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