The Wayward Children series is always such a treat. Concise quests brought to life in these rich worlds wrapped in a rainbow-colored bow of casual queerness.

The Moors are my favorite location in this series, hands down. So eerie, but so structured. The portal fantasy presented here is one of vampires, lightning, and medical experiments. Jack and Jill have swapped bodies. There was something special with the author reading her own representation of OCD through Jack. It was so effectively done.

As always with these series, so much characterization takes place in such a small set of pages. McGuire pulls it off with deft use of omniscient third. Each character feels fleshed out, even though I desperately hope we get to see Christoper’s skeleton world or the ocean. But none of those things needed to happen in this book.

The Wayward Children series also proves to be another example of a queer norm world, where the fact that Jack and Alexis are girlfriends hold no weight either in-world or hangs as a plot point. Kade is trans because Kade is trans and there’s not much to it aside from an aside to remind the reader of these facts.

Another eerie, disturbing, but captivating entry into my favorite series of portal fantasies.