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A review by afjakandys
Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
3.0
Every Heart a Doorway ★★★★
Down Among the Sticks and Bones ★★★★★
Beneath the Sugar Sky ★★
In an Absent Dream ★★★★
Come Tumbling Down ★★★
maybe it's because Down Among the Sticks and Bones is so fantastically good that the second journey to the moors could never compare, but this installment fell flat for me. though i love jack's character and i enjoyed the opportunity to revisit the moors, i'm starting to realize that i don't love the books that delve into present-day quests nearly as much as i like the prequel stories (excluding Every Heart a Doorway, which was a great introduction to this series).
mcguire is great at creating interesting characters, but it seems like any attempts to throw the entire cast together for an adventure just starts to feel chaotic. not to mention how low the stakes are--even in a place like the moors where brutality is all around, there is only one death that sticks by the end of the story. i didn't particularly want kade, cora, or bleak to die because i love them all so much--but what's the point of killing off a bunch of the main characters just to ressurrect them immediately? the fact that i want them to be safe is what's supposed to make the dangerous situations they're in all the scarier, but after reading Beneath the Sugar Sky, i have no real fear of anything bad happening to the main cast. even jill's death, which may have been hard on jack, is cathartic to the reader. the stakes just didn't feel real in this book.
with that being said, i did love that we got some quality time with the school kids and i enjoyed getting to know alexis more. all in all, this installment wasn't the strongest or the weakest of the series so far; it was simply alright.
Down Among the Sticks and Bones ★★★★★
Beneath the Sugar Sky ★★
In an Absent Dream ★★★★
Come Tumbling Down ★★★
maybe it's because Down Among the Sticks and Bones is so fantastically good that the second journey to the moors could never compare, but this installment fell flat for me. though i love jack's character and i enjoyed the opportunity to revisit the moors, i'm starting to realize that i don't love the books that delve into present-day quests nearly as much as i like the prequel stories (excluding Every Heart a Doorway, which was a great introduction to this series).
mcguire is great at creating interesting characters, but it seems like any attempts to throw the entire cast together for an adventure just starts to feel chaotic. not to mention how low the stakes are--even in a place like the moors where brutality is all around, there is only one death that sticks by the end of the story. i didn't particularly want kade, cora, or bleak to die because i love them all so much--but what's the point of killing off a bunch of the main characters just to ressurrect them immediately? the fact that i want them to be safe is what's supposed to make the dangerous situations they're in all the scarier, but after reading Beneath the Sugar Sky, i have no real fear of anything bad happening to the main cast. even jill's death, which may have been hard on jack, is cathartic to the reader. the stakes just didn't feel real in this book.
with that being said, i did love that we got some quality time with the school kids and i enjoyed getting to know alexis more. all in all, this installment wasn't the strongest or the weakest of the series so far; it was simply alright.