Synopsis When Jack left Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children, she was carrying the body of her deranged sister – whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice – back to their home on the moors. But death in their adopted world isn’t always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack is herself carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her – something terrible, something which only the maddest of scientists could conceive, and something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome. Eleanor West’s “No Quests” rule is about to be broken. Again. About the book Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is an island of misfits, a refuge for the unfinished stories and the broken wanderers who’ve once butchered deer and strung bows but no longer know what to do with indoor plumbing. It’s also most importantly a holding pen for heroes. Although they were forced to become something after they were cast out of their chosen homes, they were all heroes once. Each in their own ways. And they did not forget. The twins Jack and Jill have found their way back to the moors, where Jack was raised by an, if not mad, at least highly peculiar scientist, and Jill was raised by a master vampire to be his daughter and heir, before they return to earth and spend some time turning the Home for Wayward Children upside down. When they returned to the moors at the end of ‘Every Heart a Doorway’, Jill was dead, but Jack was confident that she could resurrect her sister once they returned to the moors. More importantly, because Jill had died and been brought back to life, Jack thought she would no longer be able to turn into a vampire. However, there’s something Jack has yet to factor in – Jill is not in the least repentant of her lethal lifestyle, and she and her adoptive vampire father have thought of an ingenious way to get around this limitation. And now that that is done, not only is it ruining Jack’s life, pushing her to the edge of a mental breakdown, but it’s likely to lead to an imbalance of power and deadly warfare in the moors. Jack, with her girlfriend Alexis, returns to the Wayward Children home to get help from her old friends. Despite the incredible story, there is quite a bit of backlash from fans. Just like with ‘Beneath the Sugar Sky’, ‘Come Tumbling Down’ focuses more on the new adventure unlike the very first books which focused more on how the children moved on, adapted, and found their way home again. As with ‘Beneath the Sugar Sky’, the ease at which the characters travel between the worlds leaves quite the bitter aftertaste when readers remember the lengths the children went to return home in ‘Every Heart a Doorway’. The devastating results of such ruthless desperation is very diminished here. ‘Come Tumbling Down’, like the whole series, is very diverse. This story has characters of colour, transgender representation, fat representation, OCD representation, anxiety representation, disability representation, and a queer main relationship. The writing too is very beautiful and up to par with what one comes to expect in a Seanan McGuire story. Memorable quotes “The world doesn’t stop spinning because you’re sad, and that’s good; if it did, people would go around breaking hearts like they were sheets of maple sugar, just to keep the world exactly where it is. They’d make it out like it was a good thing, a few crying children in exchange for a peace that never falters or fades. We can be sad and we can be hurt and we can even be killed, but the world keeps turning, and the things we’re supposed to do keep needing to be done” “No one should have to sit and suffer and pretend to be someone they’re not because it’s easier, or because no one wants to help them fix it” “‘Whoever said heroism was fair?’ she asked. ‘It’s the unfairest thing of all. Come, oh human child, and learn to swing a sword for the sake of people who’ve decided the thing you’re best for is dying in their name. We were lambs for the slaughter, all of us, and if we’ve survived, it’s not because we’re special. Come on. Let’s be heroes one more time’” “New things are the best kind of magic there is” “People always mean something. Sometimes what they mean is, ‘you can’t be trusted to remember to be kind’, and then I want to bury them up to their necks in marshmallow fluff, so they’ll remember how I choose kindness every single day” “Everyone is somebody’s bedtime story” “But he kept running. Sometimes, after all, that’s what must be said to make a hero: the willingness to keep running even after it becomes clear that the entire exercise is doomed to failure. Sometimes heroism is pressing on when the ending is already preordained” “‘Clothes matter,’ he said, draping the vest over his arm and reaching for a pile of neatly folded blouses. ‘Clothes are part of how you learn to feel like yourself, and not someone who just happens to look like you. Don’t you remember what it was like when someone else decided what you were going to wear?’” PHOTOS © AMAZON, BOOKS BEANS AND BOTANY