A fun adventure in the tradition of "children stumbling upon a portal to another world" adventure stories (which, as we know, Seanan McGuire is something of an expert in) but this also ties in to the ordered/disordered (very strangely both binary and absolutely chaotic) world of her 2019 title, Middlegame. Avery, Zib, the Drowned Girl, and the Crow Girl are all vaguely familiar to anyone who read Middlegame but it was nice to really get to see them in action.

A few things that really stand out: it really was told like a fairytale (in kind of the way that Alice in Wonderland is: a series of trials that challenge the lives of the characters we follow, forcing them to separate and learn and bargain and fail and then come together to achieve their goals), classic McGuire references to things being more than what they appear ("you don't LOOK like a girl; you are a girl, and that's not the same thing at all"), the sense that there's so much more going on in the background and in the future. Because I'm thinking there's definitely going to be a sequel.

Also, the audiobook narrator was perfect. He had that whimsical storytelling voice where every character is clear and distinct and even their voice tells you exactly what manner of person they are.

{Thank you Macmillan Audio for the ALC; all thoughts are my own}