Beneath the sugar sky

by Seanan McGuire

Paper Book, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

PS3607.R36395B46 2018

Publication

New York : Tom Doherty Associates, 2018.

Description

Fantasy. Fiction. Mythology. HTML: Another fantasy audiobook from Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series, which began with the Alex, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning, World Fantasy Award finalist, Every Heart a Doorway. Beneath the Sugar Sky, the third audiobook in McGuire's Wayward Children series, returns listeners to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children in a contemporary fantasy for fans of all ages. At this magical boarding school, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the "real" world. When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can't let Reality get in the way of her quest �?? not when she has an entire world to save! (Much more common than one would suppose.) If she can't find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she will never have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn't have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away. Good thing the student body is well-acquainted with quests... A tale of friendship, baking, and derring-do. Warning: May contain nuts.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Letora
In the world of the Wayward Children, sometimes the most impossible and improbable solution is the one you need. After all, when Rini lands in the turtle pond dressed in frosting, missing two fingers, and demanding to see her dead mother, is there really anything else the children can do? The
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children must start a new quest, one that will take them through the doors of both logical and nonsense worlds. They are in a race against the clock to resurrect Sumi and save her disappearing daughter.

Beneath the Sugar Sky will let you revisit old friends and learn the backstories of some of the original children. From start to finish, you’ll be engaged in the beautiful world-building Seanan McGuire portrays in each of these novels. And after two books of logical worlds, this new installment of the Wayward Children will show you what a nonsense world is all about.

You’ll visit a world where the sea is made of soda, the sky is filled with candy, and the clothes are made from pastries and chocolate. The trees are filled with cake pops and cookies, and you’ll never gain a pound eating it all. The rules of logic don’t exist, and when the logical children of the school enter a nonsense world, they will have to fight against their instincts and reasoning. If they think too hard about the nonsense, the world will cast them out and all will be lost.

Another fantastic installment in the Wayward Children series. This one was just as creative as the previous two books, and while it wasn’t as dark, the sense of tension and desperate hope was still there. I can’t get enough of this series!
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LibraryThing member Strider66
Pros: interesting settings, fun characters

Cons:

When Rini falls out of the sky at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children she’s shocked to learn that her mother has died. Several students help her bring her mother back, knowing that if they fail than Rini will be erased from existence.

This is
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the third novella in the Wayward Children series and returns - for a time at least - to the setting of the first book. In addition to the school and the students there, you also see Nancy again.

Rini is from a nonsense world, Confection, the world her mother, Sumi, went to and was hoping to return to one day. There’s another new character, Cora, an overweight girl who loved the underwater worlds where she was a beautiful mermaid. She’s the main point of view character, which allows the reader to understand her feelings around weight and self-confidence (and the attempts by others to use the first to undermine the second). It was interesting seeing her interactions with Christopher, who went to a world of skeletons and who therefore as unconventional ideas about flesh and weight.

The plot is fairly linear and takes the group to several locations. There are some dangers they face, though not always physical ones.

I thought the mythology of Confection was kind of cool and really fit the kind of world it was - giving it a weird sort of logic despite its nonsense overlay.

It’s a quick, fun read.
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LibraryThing member jen.e.moore
This is an absolute joy, exactly what the series needed after the darkness and heartbreak of Down Among the Sticks and Bones (which I also loved). It's wonderful to see Sumi's world, to see Nancy in her element, to learn more about Kade and Christopher and to meet Cora, the most delightful mermaid
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the worlds have ever seen. I don't know how this series keeps getting better, but it does.
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LibraryThing member krau0098
This is the third book in the Wayward Children series. All of these books have been slightly bizarre novellas focused around children who have gone to different worlds and survived different fairy tales only to be returned back to the normal world.

In this book some of the Wayward Children set out
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on an adventure to help Rini (who arrives from land of candy and bakery goods) revive her mother. Rini’s mother (Sumi) died before Rini was born and Rini needs to revive her or else Rini will disappear forever (yes, Rini is from a Nonsense world).

What follows is a bizarre quest that follows no logic and is filled with delicious descriptions of delectable sweets. I love how bizarre and creative the Wayward Children books are. They always have some adventure to them, have a very fairy tale feel to them, and are completely unpredictable.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. There were a couple parts where McGuire tries to get into the “why” and “science” behind the portal doors; this was honestly a bit confusing and got long. However, aside from these parts this was an entertaining story.

Overall this was a good continuation of the Wayward Children series. I would recommend to YA and older readers who enjoy bizarre and quirky fairy tales of sorts. I definitely plan on continuing the series and reading about more of these Wayward Children.
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LibraryThing member Stardust_Fiddle
Vividly mysterious with gothic overtones. That is how I would characterize Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series, and “Beneath the Sugar Sky” is no exception. This third book features Rini, who is seeking her mother in order to save her world. The only problem is that her mother died
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before Rini was born. And so begins the quirky and peculiar tale. The way that the worlds coexist and produce doorways leading into strange lands make for an intriguing read, and while the tale is highly imaginative, it also contains enough technical and world-building detail to challenge the reader. Don’t be fooled by the short length and beautiful cover; this is not a cute, happy-go-lucky yarn, but rather a dark fairy tale that touches on issues that children face in today’s society and the horrors that may lurk behind the doorway to the soul. Nevertheless, hope still reverberates softly throughout the story, and perhaps the final two sentences put it best: “There is kindness in the world, if we know how to look for it. If we never start denying it the door.”
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LibraryThing member titania86
After Jack and Jill go through their door, life goes on at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, a cover for children still looking for the doorway to whatever fantastical world they were expelled from too soon. Some have found their doors, others haven't, and more children arrive seeking their
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doors. Nadya and Cora are looking for a door in a pond when a girl in a sugar dress falls from the sky into the water. Her name is Rini from Confection, a nonsense world, and she's looking for her mother who was unfortunately killed by Jill. Cora, Nadya, Christopher, and Cade go on a quest to several different worlds to find Sumi and prevent Rini from disappearing bit by bit.

This world of fantastical worlds and portals is always a treat to read. Each book is a novella but packed full of dynamic characters, their development, and the best world building I've read. More worlds are seen in this book than ever before. The Halls of the Dead are burned into my mind with its elegance, darkness, and stillness where Nancy enjoys being a living statue. The Lord and Lady of the Dead force the group into a bargain for Sumi's soul. Confection is a nonsense world where everything is made of candy except for the people. The sea is soda; candy corn fields pepper the land; even the royal guards' armor and weapons are candy wrappers and hard nougat. The food never rots or goes stale and the people never get cavities or malnourished from constantly eating candy. Because of the nonsense of the word, Sumi's death has caused a weird situation where both realities (where she does and doesn't live) exist at the same time until one overtakes the other. All of the worlds, no matter how fanciful, have a layer of reality and horror where bad things happen to good people and people die due to selfishness or greed.

The motley crew who help her are only together because of circumstance, all but one waiting for their chance to return to their world. Each character seen in has moments of insight into them even if they aren't part of the main plot. Eleanor is doomed to see and help so many find their door while she remains aging decade after decade, apart from her own world. Cora is my favorite new character, a girl who lived as a mermaid in an undersea world. Her round shape is a point of shame in our world because of the implications of that shape as lazy, slow, and somehow worth less than other shapes. She proves each of those points wrong but is still affected by the fatshaming rhetoric. Christopher is another of my favorites who is in love with the Skeleton Girl and plays a flute to call the dead made of his own leg bone. I would love to read Kade's story as he was chosen for his world due to his frilly dresses as a child that did not at all reflect who he really was and the warrior became in the end. He is the only one satisfied to stay at Eleanor's home. I love each and every character that comes to the Home and I want to see everyone's backstory plus their adventures in that other world

Beneath the Sugar Sky is another fascinating look into the fantastical world of portals, other worlds, and the people who travel through them. Seanan McGuire's writing is simply amazing. She populates her worlds with women, people with disabilities, transgender people, and people of all different cultures and points of view. Their story focuses more on their friendships whether just starting or extended for years which is nice to see since so many books primarily focus on romance. It's so refreshing to see all types of people going on adventures, not just the able bodied, male, or white. The next book in this series was just announced and I'm already hyped for it. I will read every book by Seanan McGuire or her horror/sci-fi pseudonym Mira Grant.
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LibraryThing member lavaturtle
This is a good story, as well as a quick read. I like the diverse cast of characters, each with a distinctive voice and personality. I like the relationships between the characters, and their growth over the course of the story. I love the cobbled-together family that is Eleanor's school.

I think
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it's neat that each of the books in this series has a different story structure, despite being a series that's all sort of about portal fantasies. (In this case, it's sort of a group quest.)
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LibraryThing member BethYacoub
THIS BOOK WAS PURE NONSENSE!! It was also a dabbler...a sweet sweet dabbler that dabbled (obviously my word of the day) in areas that most authors either steer clear of or try to tackle and too often fail. Seanan McGuire presented many cases of Adversity and how 4 brave kids overcame the troubles
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that plagued them. This book also touched on body issues and anxieties dealing with someone's mass as opposed to their Being. She broached topics such as what a true friend is and what it means to fit in somewhere, especially when you are being the most authentic you, 100% real. Other topics arose like the (mis)handling Of people with disabilities and how they themselves, as well as those around them, cope with the truth of what they deal with and how they wish they were treated. The very fabric of Reality was examined and it was determined that Reality is real/right in different ways for different people. I loved seeing kids of Logic deal with a Nonsense world and everything that entailed. Things like Death and what it means to truly be Alive are placed under the litterary microscope and dissected in the most beautiful ways. The writing was exceptional, as always. The development of the Worlds was phenomenal! You could feel the magical air in the Land of the Dead and taste the sugary sweetness in the Land of Confection. The character's flaws, anxieties, strengths and epiphanies were so tangible that my heart skipped, raced, broke and recovered in all the right places.

If you are already a fan of this amazing series then you'll be richly rewarded with this new addition! If you are on the fence about whether or not to pick up this gem, I hope this review convinces you to jump off that stodgy old fence and open your own door to lands you couldn't possibly imagine without a tour guide. THIS BOOK IS SURREAL and CAPTIVATING!! I feel like McGuire's Wayward Children is my own personal door to Whimsy and Logic, Fairyland and Underword and I LOVED every minute of it!!
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LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
Nice! A(nother) completely different aspect on the Wayward Children - the first was a new arrival at the school, the second was the past events that led to some students coming to the school, and this story starts from the events of the first story and leads a small group of students on a quest.
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It's a fascinating voyage through several Otherworlds, beautifully illuminating their differences and what underlies each - Reason, Logic (not quite the same thing), Nonsense, etc. A little more light cast on Christopher and Kade, and Nadya (I think we've seen her before), though most of the story is through the eyes of a new student, Cora. And a happy ending - several happy endings (though what Sumi is going to do...I guess she just won't be mentioned to her parents). Very twisty timelines, as the present comes to save the past from the future... Loved it, next please. These novellas are physically short, but there's so much in each one it's at least as satisfying as a full novel.
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LibraryThing member BillieBook
It would have probably been four stars if I had read the previous two, but there were a few moments where I felt like I was missing a bit of context. On the plus side, I'm definitely going back and reading the first two now.
LibraryThing member rivkat
OK, I guess I’m never satisfied, because this book lacks McGuire’s writing tics (repetition, too many rhymes/quotes spelling out the themes) but also didn’t have quite as much magic as some of her earlier books about the home for children who’ve returned from other worlds, usually resentful
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about it. In this one, the daughter of a murdered teen comes looking for her mother because the daughter is starting to unravel, having now never been born (she’s from a Nonsense world). Some of the other kids go on a journey through multiple worlds to put her mother back together. It’s a quest, and there’s beauty and kindness, and that’s about it.
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LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
This I would have liked this even more if I had read the prequels. It made me want to hunt them out so not a bad thing overall.

When a girl falls into a pond beside some of the girls who want to be back in the watery worlds they found themselves in before and demands that they help her find her
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mother. But her mother is dead; before she can be a mother and they have to find her and bring her back, if they can at all, to save the world that would have been hers. Along the way they learn things about themselves and the worlds that attracted them and maybe now aren't as good a fit as they were.

It's an interesting concept; a place for those who find themselves displaced; a strangeness that warps their relationship with this world and plays with the tropes of those found worlds. This stood well enough alone for me but made me want to read the rest of the series.
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LibraryThing member bookczuk
I've read the Wayward Children books in a topsy turvy manner, starting with Down Among the Sticks and Bones, then Every Heart a Doorway (I actually bought another book with a similar title thinking it was this one, and by the time I figured it out, had "Sticks and Bones" in my hands so read that
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first). The only one I've read in order is this, and I'm so glad I did, because it answered a lot of questions I had from Down Among the Sticks and Bones.

Children disappear for a number of reasons, some nefarious, some with an element of magic. That there are doorways between worlds is accepted, thanks to wardrobes, subtle knives, portals, and other devices so many of us have come across in literature. (I personally believe books are gateways, too, but that's another story.) Sometimes those of us who leave one world and enter another can stay there, sometimes we come back for one reason or another, sometimes we long to return to that other place-- to find the doorway to take us back. Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, provides a place for those wishing to return to their new world from their home world of Earth, or wait for a new door to open.

In the second book in the series, we were introduced to Eleanor West's home and some of the students living there. This book doesn't exactly take up where that one left off, though it does take place after in time. What it does do is focus on some of the other students, peripheral in the original story, and weave a story where they go on a rescue mission, taking them to a couple of other worlds.

Again, a fascinating story -- one which proves there is a place for each of us, and that maybe it's true: those who live in gingerbread houses seem to have cold, cruel hearts.

The book is due out in January 2018, I believe.

Thanks to friends at Tor for sending me this advanced readers copy. You're the best!
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LibraryThing member fred_mouse
As with the rest of the series, I adored it. The setting, the complex world building, the multiple portal worlds --fascinating in and of themselves, but also an intricate scaffolding for a coming of age story for people who are not of the world that they were born into.

This story follows on from
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the first book of the series, investigating the consequences of one of the major plot incidents of that book. It also manages the odd side arc looking at what happens to those who find their worlds after being forcibly returned to their birth world.

For lovers of portal fantasies, of stories that run on plot not logic, and those who get that heart warming stories don't have to be happy all the way through and quests don't have to be about body counts and character torture.
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LibraryThing member jdifelice
Another great novella from Seanan McGuire. I really love the world's that are created in this series. I really enjoyed how we got to explore multiple ones in this instalment, and how we were introduced to more characters, and got to know some more side characters. This was really well written, and
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I was engaged the whole time.

This book just made me smile, and feel happy inside.
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LibraryThing member saltmanz
Not nearly as interesting as the first two books, I think. Though it was nice catching up with the characters from the first installment.
LibraryThing member renbedell
Another fantastic novella that takes a unique twist to fairy tales. It is more in line with the first book. The book is a fun read seeing the different dynamics of the different worlds.
LibraryThing member Herenya
It's rare that I read something which reminds me of Enid Blyton's fantasy, which was my introduction to fantasy stories. However, this novella, in which a group of teenagers go on a mission to a nonsense world, felt a lot like reading a grown-up, modern Faraway Tree adventure -- darker, with fewer
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dated stereotypes and with much more elegant prose. That perspective made it more interesting.

It’s still not quite my aesthetic, but it isn’t as dark as Every Heart a Doorway and I liked how it followed on from that story. (I’ve skipped the second book because it’s backstory about a particular dark portal world. The fourth one is also a backstory; I might skip that too.)

Children have always tumbled down rabbit holes, fallen through mirrors, been swept away by unseasonal floods or carried off by tornadoes. Children have always travelled, and because they are young and bright and full of contradictions, they haven’t always restricted their travel to the possible. Adulthood brings limitations like gravity and linear space and the idea that bedtime is a real thing, and not an artificially imposed curfew.
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LibraryThing member bluesalamanders
Rini appears in mid-air, falls into the school’s pond, and then demands to be taken to her mother, Sumi.

Absolutely fantastic. I loved (and thoroughly related to) the viewpoint character, Cora, who is fat and always expects people to react first and foremost to her appearance, and is often
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surprised when they don’t at the Home for Wayward Children.

Content warnings: internalized fatphobia, discussions of fatphobia, brief fatphobia (also discussions of dieting and other controlling behaviors) by antagonist, discussions of racism
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LibraryThing member flying_monkeys
I loved the addition of the quest element. And I really liked Cora. Oh, and Confection was pure decadence and imagination and nonsense -- fabulous!

4 stars
LibraryThing member chavala
Reading this book, I thought, "Seannan McGuire gets me, she really really gets me!"
LibraryThing member tapestry100
I honestly can't go too much into what this book is about as it could spoil portions of Every Heart a Doorway, but it's just as fantastic as any other book in the series. Back in the school, Beneath the Sugar Sky picks up shortly after the events of Every Heart and introduces us to some new
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students at the school; we also get to see more into a couple of the portal worlds that we have heard about in previous books. I can't wait to see where McGuire takes the story next year after the events of this book.
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LibraryThing member acciohaley
Yeah, okay, I'm here for it. Me, being a sucker for quest based storylines, loved this.

It was a fun book to read; I loved getting more info on new worlds and meeting new characters and learning how well their personalities mesh with the worlds they were called to. One of my favorite aspects of all
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of the wayward children books is that Seanan McGuire is able to capture the essence of her characters so well and create entire worlds where they could thrive so perfectly. She really does have some pretty fantastic and wonderfully diverse characters. I loved the introduction of the new characters as well as seeing more of Kade and Christopher, who are both some of my favorites.

I was worried when I read the synopsis that I was going to hate it because it's completely nonsensical and I had no idea how Seanan Mcguire was going to pull it off. It had all the makings to be a truly horrible book full of plotholes and storylines that made no sense. But honestly, it being completely nonsensical was what made the entire plot thrive and I enjoyed it a lot.

Confection is such an interesting world and I love how nothing about it makes sense but somehow, at the same time, everything about it makes sense. Being on the nonsense compass it's not supposed to make sense and that's really where the beauty comes from.

While I still think Down Among the Sticks and Bones is my favorite book in the series so far, this one is just barely right behind it in second place because I adored it so much.
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LibraryThing member TheDivineOomba
Honestly, I thought this book was a horrible addition to this series. I loved the first book, it interesting take on what happens when children sucked to another world come back... and the second book, about Jack and Jill's Adventure in a classic horror themed type world, but this one, I felt too
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preachy, and the main character, Cora, was written to promote body image rather than a full fledged character.

The story itself was also a bit silly. I think it might have worked if the characters were a bit more fleshed out, but there was an inconsistency about what was needed to revive Sumi that was rather annoying.

Overall,I found the book tedious - between the story hitting you over the head with its message of body acceptance, and the silly plot, I will suggest only reading this if you like the first two books.
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LibraryThing member iansales
Yet another sequel. This is the third instalment in the Wayward Children series, about which I know nothing… but can pretty much guess what it’s about from this novella alone. Think Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Sort of. But less clever. McGuire’s prose is so bland it rivals
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Gaiman’s. Except, that is, for the occasional flight of fancy, none of which actually work. The story is all “poor fat girl who is actually a princess in another reality” tagging along with some friends who try to help a fellow “wayward child” at a school for children who have spent time in other worlds and can’t cope in the real one. The central conceit is, I admit, quite neat, and McGuire clearly has a great deal of fun with it. But it all reads like poor-me fiction and a single idea stretched well past breaking point. The first volume in the series, Every Heart a Doorway, won the Hugo and Nebula awards in 2017, and I’m told it’s better than this one. And the second instalment, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, was nominated last year. But Beneath the Sugar Sky‘s presence on the shortlist says more about the power of McGuire’s fanbase than it does the quality of her fiction.
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Awards

Language

Original publication date

2018-01-08

Physical description

174 p.; 22 cm

ISBN

9780765393586

Barcode

34500000557072
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