Alex, Janelle and Marzie Read Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children, Book 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Part 2)

Alexis and Jack, from Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Tor.com) by Rovina Cai

When we left Every Heart a Doorway, the first book in the Wayward Children series, Jill had been revealed as a killer, and Jack put an end to her twin sister before she could kill any more of Eleanor West's students or teachers. The book closes shortly after Jack opens a door in the air and returns with Jill's corpse to The Moors. In Down Among the Sticks and Bones we see Jack and Jill's lives before we met them in Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children. We meet their horrible parents, and we see what five years in The Moors brings them. Thus, the second book in the series is a prequel, though I'm willing to bet that McGuire wrote large portions of this book before Every Heart, since the back story of Jack and Jill seems crucial to the plot of EHAD. Since book five is titled Come Tumbling Down it seems we will definitely be hearing more about Jack and Jill.

❝Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.❞

- English Nursery Rhyme, Mother Goose, 1777 

Here's a look at my review from when Down Among the Sticks and Bones was first published in 2017:

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When we last saw twins Jack and Jill Walcott in Every Heart a Doorway, McGuire's Nebula Award winning novella, a killer had been outed, and Jack was finally free, due to various developments, to return to the home of her heart, The Moors, a world of mad science, vampires and werewolves. Sumi, Nancy's ill-fated roommate, had once admonished her that "You're nobody's doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell your story is you." Well, it turns out if you're an identical twin that it's a little more complicated than that. You might find your story is inextricably interwoven with that of your sibling and neither of you can quite manage to have things exactly as you wish.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the second of McGuire's Wayward Children books in a series that tells us about portals to other worlds (be they doorways or trunks with stairs going down, down, down) and the children who find those worlds. Jack and Jill enter the world of The Moors on a rainy, boring afternoon, from the portal of their loving grandmother's trunk, which is located in the attic of their asphyxiating, sterile family home. At first, you may be puzzled, if you have recently read Every Heart a Doorway, by the seeming role reversals of the twins, because as raised by their parents, Jillian is raised by parental dictates to be a tomboy and Jacquelyn is forced into the role of a girly girl. (This all occurs after being cruelly separated from their loving grandmother, who raised them for the first five years of their lives.) The Moors sets it all right, except for the part where Jill becomes a little, um, "ruthless," something that will be no surprise to readers of the first Wayward Children book.

Less a sequel than a prequel (since we see the lives Jack and Jill led before arriving at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children) Down Among the Sticks and Bones was more compelling than its predecessor to me because rather than providing us with mystery, the story provides us with a deeper backstory that makes us empathize with both girls, but especially Jack.

Three lovely illustrations by Rovina Cai accompanied my ARC, and I loved the touch that the illustrations only present views of the world of The Moors, a point which I found reminiscent of the film version of The Wizard of Oz giving us a color version of Oz. The Moors is the real world of Jack and Jill Wolcott. And it's a fearsome, wonderful place, where Jack finds love, friendship, true knowledge and terrible heartbreak, and Jill finds the limits of love are more inflexible than she might have thought.

This isn't a conventional children's book, but it is a book that weaves yet another dark and beautiful fairytale.

I was fortunate to have received an Advanced Review Copy of this book.

If possible, I cried even more in rereading DATSAB. Poor Jack. She has lost so much. She tries so hard but her sister Jill manages to take everything she loves most from her, including for a time, The Moors.

Let's get to our discussion of this moving novella...



Alex, Janelle and Marzie's Buddy Read Discussion of Down Among the Sticks and Bones Part 2

Part 1 of this discussion, where we talk about how much we love Jack, have qualms about Jill, the world of The Moors, and whether Seanan wrote this story before EHAD, can be found over on Alex Can Read.

Part 2

Alex: Can we talk about Chester and Serena and how awful they are, but also how perfectly realistic they are, despite being presented as caricatures? I HATED them, but can’t deny that there absolutely are parents exactly like that.

Janelle: There are parents exactly like that. I think they had as strong a hand in shaping who Jack and Jill (especially Jill) ultimately became. It was really masterfully done. I didn’t feel like they were over the top at all, just slightly worse parents than most kids get. I mean, when I reread it, I felt like there were instances in which their relationship to their daughters was a little exaggerated, but not so much that it threw me out of the story. It is another example of how much I love how awesome she is at creating fantastic character development. It’s so elegant.

Marzie: I really despised their parents. Thank goodness they escaped them. But I loved their grandmother, Gemma Lou. Do you think that the Grandmother left that door for them if they needed it?

Alex: I really liked Louise too. I’m not sure though that it’s possible to leave doors like that unless they’re hereditary doors - I’m not sure that the Moors are hereditary doors.

Marzie: It made me wonder… Especially since Jack can just create a door when she is ready to go back without a live Jill. And Janelle, you mention Jill being like her parents. It makes a fascinating study of nature versus nurture, like the Minnesota twins study except these twins were in the same home and totally opposite one another in nature. Though I guess the parents fostered that opposition. But I wonder what made Jack so different? She is so much nicer a person than Jill.

Janelle: I think Jack was less easily manipulated. I think she was stronger.

Alex: Stronger in some ways, but her parents left real scars on her. Her germaphobic OCD is definitely a direct result of her parents' overbearing desire for her to be spotless at all times. I think Jack learned how to play the social game and Jill just never learned to think for herself, so when they were presented with choices, Jack knew enough to be able to make choices, but Jill went along with whatever was easiest and opposite.

Janelle: Yes, people break in different ways, that is definitely true. And Jill can’t be absolved of everything because of her parents.

Marzie: One thing I really related to was how the twins flipped with respect to their appearance on the Moors. It seems like an initially superficial thing, but it was profound. I’m not sure that Jack could have found her relationship with Alexis if she hadn’t been able to be her more authentic self.

Alex: Oh absolutely. I’m pretty convinced that if Jack had never gone to the Moors, she probably would have snapped in a really public, dramatic way in our world a la Britney Spears in 2009.

Janelle: It’s really interesting to consider different iterations, and how people might break in different ways.

Marzie: Well, and ultimately it is Jill who breaks in a really ghastly public fashion, after her life on the Moors. I went back and reread the end of Every Heart, and it’s just so heartbreaking.

Alex: I honestly think Jill might have been fine in our world if she’d never gone to the Moors. Unhappy and unfulfilled but ultimately fine.

Janelle: Alex, that adds an incredible dimension to the story for me. Like, Jill went to the Moors and broke, but if Jack had stayed in the real world, she would have broken. I love that. I hadn’t really put it together in my mind like that. I love Jill as a character.

Marzie: I'd honestly have to say that I never liked Jill. She is so self-consumed.

Alex: I like her as a character construct. I hate her as a person.

Janelle: I wouldn’t like her as a person. Haha.

Marzie: Yes, not a person to have in one’s life but a good person to have on a bookshelf. Maybe in a tightly closed book.

Janelle: I have a soft spot for books that portray a teenage girl as vindictive, spiteful, self-consumed, and evil. It satisfies the teenage Janelle who was bullied by these girls. Haha.

Marzie: Jill definitely fits the Mean Girls bill here. And Jack has tried very hard to prove herself different.

Alex: YES. I love Mean Girls, and I love this story for that flavor. I love when women are allowed to be as bitchy and awful and nuanced as guys get to be in books.

Janelle: Yes, I love that too. A lot of stories are like, “women are sisters and wonderful!” and I am like, that is not my experience of women. Especially of teenage girls.

Marzie: Having raised a teenage girl and two teenage boys, I can definitely say I think girls can be far, far meaner. Though, my daughter still has strong female friendships.

Janelle: I think it is a socialization issue. But I would tend to agree.

Alex: I agree that it’s largely a socialization issue, which is why I think portraying nuanced women is so important.

Marzie: I think it helps young adult readers to see these complicated women who get to be a hot mess, mean, etc. I think it helps them learn to navigate the social environment in a way that might not otherwise be possible for those who feel they are different, whether they are ready to embrace that difference or not. Seeing how awful Jill is, and how Jack survives her (quite literally) is a valuable thing, too.

Alex: Speaking of women being allowed to be themselves, I just LOVE how patient and understanding of Jack’s OCD Alexis is. She’s willing to jump through multiple hoops to sanitize herself to the point that Jack is comfortable being intimate. That’s the kind of relationship more people should strive for. One that is based on a patient understanding of each other’s needs.

Marzie: I just loved Alexis and her family. Alexis's family's acceptance of Jack and Alexis’ manner of showing her love for Jack (her acceptance of the OCD, as you say) was so touching. The contrasting cruelty of Jill’s treatment of Jack because she loves Alexis was heartbreaking to me. I was just in tears, all over again, rereading this book.

Alex: I have to say in Jack’s shoes I would have let the townspeople kill Jill. She took everything away from Jack in her fit of selfishness, and I am not a big enough person to forgive anyone for that.

Marzie: I think that Jack wouldn’t have been able to live with herself. She’s too good a person to have allowed that if she could prevent it. I have no doubt Jill wouldn't have done the same thing, though.

Janelle: I absolutely would have let Jill die. Haha. But hopefully, the new story will have either Jill’s death or a redemption story.

Alex: Yes, I can’t wait to see what comes in Come Tumbling Down! I’m just disappointed that we have to wait until 2020!

Marzie: So you think that Jack resurrects her and she dies again? Or Dr. Bleak doesn’t let her resurrect her?

Janelle: Yes, I do. (Dying again.)

Alex: Dr. Bleak said it’s nigh impossible to resurrect someone twice, which is why they can’t bring Alexis back. So it’s unlikely that they’d be able to bring Jill back twice.

Marzie: So after Jack kills Jill and takes her back home to resurrect her, maybe the people of the Moors kill the resurrected Jill in revenge or something? And wow, Janelle clearly wants her gone! LOL

Alex: Yeah, I think Jack brings her back, but then the people of the Moors or something else kills her.

Marzie: Well, I would feel for Jack all over again. She lost her lover and to lose her sister yet gain would be terrible.

Janelle: I don’t necessarily want her gone, I just like viciousness. It just depends on what McGuire wants to do with her character if she will become the new Big Bad of the Moors, or get killed by angry town people.

Marzie: LOL I don’t want her gone, but I do want her “different.” There’s enough cruelty in the world at present. I keep looking for my door to escape but can’t find it. 

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Join us again in two weeks, when we will be discussing Beneath the Sugar Sky, and then /drumroll/ our ARC of In an Absent Dream, which releases on January 8th, 2019.

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