Hugo reading.
Okay, so I’m torn with this book. As a book and as a story that is another entry in the Seanan McGuire thinks about portal fantasy and children, it’s a really interesting story. And her character and narrative voice carry the story so well and the book itself gestures towards some crunchy - the role of children in fantasy novels and the emotional effects of being in a narrative and making visible/real the effects of magic (in like so many ways), but the gestures themselves are vague.
Which is where I get into the literary critic “I read this to vote on it” territory. As a book, it’s not about anything, at least not in the way I wanted it to be about something. Contrasting this to the wayward children books, which is what it’s closest to by far, there’s an absence of...something here, whereas those books are so strongly interested in the questions that I said this book only gestures to. And, on the one hand, the purpose of the story is to tell the story of the people in it isn’t a fault. And/but I wanted it to say something and I’m not entirely sure it did.