Ace Book Review: "Every Heart a Doorway" by Seanan McGuire

 “Nobody gets to tell me how my story ends but me.”

Back in 2010, when the live action Alice in Wonderland came out, I very clearly remember having a discussion with a good friend of mine who had just seen the film. In this version of the classic story, Alice is a young woman who revisits Wonderland after having been there as a child. [Spoilers!] While escaping an unwanted and unexpected marriage proposal, Alice follows the white rabbit and once again finds herself in the magical realm where she re-meets her old friends, slays the fearsome Jabberwocky, and brings peace back to the lands that were put under the tyranny of the Red Queen. From there, she decides to return home, and rather than marrying the unsuitable man that’s been picked for her, she rejects this more typical path and instead becomes apprentice to the man’s father, establishing business trade routes in Hong Kong and beginning a future in this new adventurous enterprise.

When my friend saw the film, she was immediately flabbergasted by the fact that Alice would ever willingly go back to the “real world,” trade routes to Hong Kong or no. In general, the ending of the film was a bit of a controversial choice for several reasons, but I could especially see my friend’s point – it seemed like there was no real reason to go back. The idea of someone escaping the confines of their society for a magical world and then coming back to the world they were clearly trying to escape can be baffling, especially for those of us who feel outcast in the real world and would love to find a place where we belong. And yet, this is often a staple of the fantasy subgenre typically known as “portal fantasy.”

In portal fantasy, many a quirky hero (or set of heroes) finds themselves in a magical realm that is entered through a portal. From there, they must navigate the landscape and often take on some kind of quest, and although the world holds many splendors for them, they eventually must return to the “real world,” whether through necessity or their own choice. Think of stories like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wizard of Oz or the book it’s based on, or the aforementioned Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its related media. All of these stories involve protagonists who return home following their fantastical adventures.

But what about a story where the young savior of a magical world doesn’t want to go back home? What happens if they have to go back anyway? Where would they go? What would they do to cope when home no longer feels like home? And would there ever be a way for them to get back to the magical realm that now understands them better than anything else ever did and, in some cases, allows them to be truly happy and truly themselves for the first time? These questions and more are all explored in Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway, the first book in a series known as the Wayward Children series.

The novella-length story follows seventeen-year-old Nancy Whitman, who arrives at an unusual school known as Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Nancy’s parents have brought her to the school as many despairing parents do – they believe Nancy was kidnapped and went through a traumatic ordeal she can’t overcome on her own, and they’ve sent her to this boarding school in the hopes that it will help her recover so they can get their old daughter back. But the truth of the matter is that Nancy was not kidnapped, nor did she go through an ordeal; rather, she went through a doorway and ended up in a realm that ended up feeling perfect for her. Now that realm feels like home and the place that used to feel like home feels foreign.

In Nancy’s case, her realm was known as the Halls of the Dead, but for the children in the home, there are countless realms that spoke to them and called them through, realms they cherish and don’t want to forget. In some cases, they’re realms that these wayward children would give anything to go back to, and in some cases these are realms which they may possibly never be able to go back to again. Even Eleanor herself was once a child who went through a doorway and found a new home. Now that she’s an older woman, who very well may never be able to go back to her world ever again, she helps those children who are like the girl she once was, teaching them and helping them as only one who can understand them can do.

During her time at the school, Nancy meets and befriends many others who can understand her journey and her yearning. This begins with her new roommate Sumi, an energetic and fast-moving girl who went to a candy-based nonsense world known as Confection, and Kade, the former savior of a fantasy world called Prism who now acts as the school’s tailor and who helps Nancy when she discovers her parents have replaced all her dark-colored clothes with rainbow ones. She’s later introduced to several others, such as the eternally youthful school counselor Lundy, a young man named Christopher who went to a world of skeletons, and twins Jacqueline and Jillian (Jack and Jill), who found themselves in a horror-esque realm known only as The Moors, forming a diverse and vibrant cast of characters who come from an equally fascinating set of worlds just begging to be explored.

Right away, I was immensely excited at the onset of this story – not only is the concept deeply intriguing, but the first few chapters pulled me in immediately. I loved the idea of the school and the way it lets the numerous, varied worlds all sort of collide as the students share their experiences. I also loved the fact that these worlds and the way they functioned were introduced gradually through Nancy learning about her classmates’ experiences rather than having an infodump about how the portal magic worked. It lent the school an air of intrigue, each classmate’s story a tiny blip of information that made me want to know more about them and the worlds they called home.

The story establishes that the worlds can be plotted somewhere on the compass of Logic, Nonsense, Virtue, and Wickedness, with other minor attributes like Rhyme, Whimsy, and others being smaller directions that help describe a world while not necessarily completely defining it. For example, the Halls of the Dead where Nancy found herself is a world that can be plotted on the Logical and Wicked scales; meanwhile, the world that had been visited by her roommate Sumi is termed Nonsense and largely Virtuous, but with an underpinning of logical rules that keep it running despite the otherwise fanciful nature of it. The idea that even the characters are learning about the worlds as they go made me want to know more and to go on these journeys with them, finding out bits and pieces of information as I went in a way that made the first half of the book compulsively readable.

However, the story lost me in a big way about halfway through when the plot shifted to something of a murder mystery. That in and of itself wouldn’t have bothered me much; although I was more interested in the portal worlds and the school aspects of the story, the mystery was a good way to bring the characters together for a common goal, revealing their hopes, their biases, and their true characteristics along the way. Rather, the thing that bothered me was that the murders took the story in an unexpectedly very gory direction.

I can’t stress this part enough: if blood and gore are squicks for you at all, this book is more than likely not for you. I’m no stranger to blood, gore, and disturbing content being included in many of the books I’ve read and reviewed for this blog. In many of those reviews, I discuss how some of the squicks are things that are personally uncomfortable for me and likely won’t offend everyone, and I’ve also mentioned that if even I can get through these aspects, then most people probably can. But in the case of this story, the intensity of the gory, disturbing scenes actually caught me very off-guard.

Many of these scenes are described very unflinchingly and (at least from my perspective) uncomfortably. The bodies of the murder victims are often described in detail, and the things that happened to them to precipitate their deaths are discussed in clinical and graphic terms by Jack, who doesn’t shy away from these things as a trained scientist and surgeon. There are very pronounced elements of body horror, and horror story tropes such as dismemberment and reanimation are central to the plot. Again, these things are often described in varying levels of graphic intensity and are delivered either through the novel’s regular descriptions or through Jack’s analytical interpretations, and the fact that the victims are teenagers may be deeply upsetting for some people.

Beyond the graphic nature of these murders, there are other things throughout the story that might be triggering or upsetting. For instance, Kade is transgender, and the struggles he faced with transphobia are not only discussed, but play out vividly. He talks about the pressure from his parents, who wanted him to continue being “their little girl,” and also that Prism threw him out when it came to light that he identified as male rather than female. Even more than that, there are scenes where some of his schoolmates misgender him and engage in transphobic language. While this is always portrayed as wrong and uncouth, it still happens more than once in ways that some readers may find upsetting. Similar things happen to other characters; for instance, Jack’s analytical nature earns her derision and she is called a freak by different classmates.

To me, this was slightly at odds with the notion that the students were supposed to be able to relate to one another or that, if they did tease each other, it was only because they couldn’t fathom each other’s worlds – for instance, Christopher says he often has to beat the other boys up when they criticize the Skeleton Girl, his one true love in Mariposa, the land of the skeletons. The more real-world instances of discrimination or prejudice may be somewhat important to make a commentary, not only on various identities, but how people react to things that are different than their own reality. In some cases, I even think they’re effective; but they nevertheless may be uncomfortable for some.

That being said, let me shift back to talking about the main reason why I read this book in the first place. That, of course, would be its aspec representation, which we get in the form of our main character Nancy. I love that Nancy was explicitly identified as aspec – specifically asexual – and that the story introduces this concept to us very early in the narrative (chapter two). Not only that, but Nancy even explains the difference between asexuality and celibacy, and the narrative later clarifies the difference between asexuality and aromanticism. Through this, we learn that Nancy is okay with romance, but was never able to really achieve it because most of the people around her when she still went to regular high school always combined dating/romance with sex.

All of these things are done in a very straightforward manner that I could really appreciate, and I think that these concepts as introduced through Nancy would be a good introduction to asexuality if someone wasn’t familiar with these identities. However, I wasn’t a super big fan of how Nancy’s asexuality comes up in the story. It happens when Nancy is first introduced to Kade and is struck, in a completely non-desirous way, by how beautiful he is. When Sumi sees this, she asks Nancy very crudely if she’s interested in having sex with him, which shocks Nancy into eventually elaborating on her feelings.

It’s certainly a quick way to have this come up, and it very easily puts us in the mindset that any admiration Nancy has for other people is never going to be sexual. However, for as quick and easy as it is to introduce this element of Nancy’s personality, it’s certainly not the way I’d personally want to come out to someone as aspec. Furthermore, as a sex-repulsed asexual reader, it’s admittedly an unpleasant bit of phrasing that puts me in mind of many unpleasant interactions I’ve had with people. A bit later, Sumi likewise unflinchingly discusses masturbation – while that’s nothing to be ashamed of, and her lack of shame on the matter underscores the fact that she’s not in keeping with the conventions of the “regular” world, it’s nevertheless not something I enjoyed having described as she describes it. However, that’s probably more specific to me than it might be for other people, so take that with a grain of salt.

Outside of these more unpleasant elements, I think Nancy’s asexuality is an interesting part of her, especially as someone who went to an underworld realm. Her narration mentions how being aspec in the “regular” world meant that people called her dead inside, which is something I feel is important to bring up – and, even more importantly, it’s shown that Nancy’s world isn’t defined by the other people in it being aspec. I think this is good, because it shows that aspecness isn’t a fantastical thing, something only found in some realm beyond the doorway or that can only be accepted in another place or time. Much like Kade being transgender, I think Nancy being aspec allows us to see the realness of these identities; they’re not just fantasy things, but things that exist in this world and are important in this world too.

These are just my opinions, however. While doing a little research on the book, I saw that some readers felt that the asexual representation could have been played up a bit more. To these readers, the fact that Nancy was identified as asexual felt more like a characteristic than any actual representation, since her asexual identity doesn’t really factor into the story and the plot. Admittedly, they are right about this in some respects – if Nancy was never identified as asexual, either explicitly or implicitly, the story would largely function in the same way. However, I do think that Nancy being an asexual character is still important.

I’ve experienced a great deal of aphobia in my life and I’ve seen a lot of people both online and in real life who mischaracterize aspec identities – or even just mischaracterized non-sexual and/or non-romantic people, feelings, and stories. I do, of course, think it’s vital to have conversations about how we portray aspec characters, and to see media where their aspec identities are important parts of the story, because only then will we see representation improve. But I also think it’s important to have characters who are just allowed to be aspec as part of who they are, even if it’s not a huge part of the story. We still need visibility as much as we need representation, and I loved the fact that Nancy was allowed to be casually aspec, and this was just an inherent part of her that she already knew and accepted, even before her journey.

Furthermore, even if the story isn’t really about Nancy herself in the end and her asexuality is only one small part of the whole, there are so many things about her story that I believe can speak to many people’s aspec experience. In general, the students at the school are often drawn to these portal worlds because they have a need the world can fill. For instance, Sumi lived a life that was overly structured for her by strict parents and was called to a nonsense world because she needed nonsense in her life. In Nancy’s case, she found herself feeling like she belonged in the Halls of the Dead because she needed peace, quiet, and stillness. Many times, the narrative mentions that she did not want to be “hot and fast” as the living were, and preferred the stillness she found serving in the Halls. Although nothing about this is explicitly aspec, the idea of longing for peace is something I can deeply relate to, and the feeling of being out of place that all the children share is very relatable.

[Spoilers for the end of the story, as well as book three!]

In the end, although she’s been told the odds are against her, Nancy does find a way to return to where she belongs. This is a wonderful scene, but it does unfortunately mean that Nancy is not featured heavily past this book. I did a little digging after finishing Every Heart a Doorway and found that Nancy does have a cameo in the third book, Beneath the Sugar Sky, which also has many of the same characters as the first book. Just to tie up some of those loose ends, I read this book as well. Nancy’s cameo is indeed as brief as I suspected it was (although it was enjoyable to see her), and it didn’t lead to any significant developments for her other than the knowledge that she is happy to be back where she belongs.

However, there is one thing that jumped out at me about Beneath the Sugar Sky – there were a lot of random mentions of sex which, while not at all graphic, felt unnecessary to me. Likewise with several mentions of various female sex organs and/or reproductive body parts. Again, this was not done in a graphic way and all of these mentions were just matter of fact more than anything else, but it was nevertheless unexpected to have a main character be naked and discussing their sex characteristics, or have friends tease each other about certain things like body hair. Since the characters are teenagers, it does make sense – and of course being open about sex, sexuality, and body parts in this manner can actually be a very good thing – but from my perspective, it was a bit strange, and it might be for some other readers as well.

After finishing this book, I continued to do a little digging about the rest of the series, trying to determine if there were any other aspec characters or elements besides Nancy in book one. Although not aspec per se, I did see some confirmation from the author that Jack is sex-repulsed due to her germophobic tendencies and, although her identity is pansexual rather than anything on the asexual and/or aromantic spectrums, I thought that was still worth mentioning. However, apart from this, there doesn’t seem to be anything, and so for that reason, I’m going to limit my reviewing of the series to only this first book, since that is of course what is the most relevant to my blog.

Overall, despite the gory elements and some of the things I didn’t enjoy about the book, I’m glad I read Every Heart a Doorway and was introduced to these characters. Portal fantasy is a unique and fascinating subgenre and I love exploring it, so to see the journeys of these diverse characters was of great value to me. Even more than that, I loved being able to see Nancy and experience a fantasy world where an aspec character got to be loved and appreciated for who she is. I loved that she didn’t have to go on that journey to figure out her identity and that instead, her journey was to find where she’d feel a sense of peace, belonging, and happiness.

Like Nancy and many of the other Wayward Children, I think many of us who identify as aspec – or any other queer identity – can relate to the feeling of being apart from the “real world.” We may even be able to relate to the feeling of finding safety and never wanting to go back to a place where we aren’t safe, or craving the ability to feel seen. As is true for the Wayward Children, these are not easy journeys. They’re not easy to undertake, they’re not easy to part with, and they’re not easy to find again. But even just the act of feeling seen can be important. Beneath the Sugar Sky ends with this line: “There is kindness in the world if we know how to look for it – if we never start denying it the door.” I’d certainly like to think that’s true and maybe these books are part of creating a world where kindness can be found right here and right now, not in some faraway realm.