Title: Come Tumbling Down
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publication Date: January 7, 2020
Series: Wayward Children #5
Previous Reviews:
Every Heart a Doorway
Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Beneath the Sugar Sky
In An Absent Dream
Publisher: Tor
Format: NetGalley eARC

I confess that I have a love/hate relationship with this series.

On the one hand, Seanan McGuire’s writing and worlds are vivid and gorgeous and easy to love. On the other, I seem to enjoy them less and less as the series goes on. BUT NO MORE. This book for sure broke that cycle.

Come Tumbling Down takes us back to the dark world of the Moors and a conflict between two sisters who couldn’t be more dissimilar. Oh, and it breaks the “no quest” rule, but in the most fabulous way.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones was my favorite book of this series, and Jack and Jill were two of my favorite characters, so I was thrilled to return to their story. And now? Pretty sure this is my new favorite of the series. There was just so much to love.

This review contains spoilers for the previous books in the series.

❧ I have missed these characters sooo much, and this book is pretty much a best of the best.

It assembles all the characters I’ve come to know and love like a teen Avengers … except with 100% less superpowers. This is Jack’s book, but there’s also Alexis, Sumi, Kade, Christopher, and Cora, and they were all delightful. Their banter was on point, and I enjoyed seeing them all work together, despite their obvious differences (and different worlds).

The characters are not without changing: Alexis is freshly revived and at times needs to sign, when her voice fails her as her new body shuts down, and Sumi is a little darker than I remember.

But I actually sort of loved these changes? It shows how the previous books have impacted the characters, rather than having them stagnate. Sumi filled in as translator when Alexis signed, and it was really nice to have a non-verbal character show up in a book and be treated as an equal part of the cast, even when she’s signing, rather than relegated to some silent side character.

❧ The “no quests” rule is about to be broken … again. And I absolutely love it.

Can we make a new rule? Yes quests. Please. All the quests. Quests are fun, and the characters make it all the more so, because they’re all heroes of their own worlds, so seeing how they react to new worlds is thrilling.

My favorite part of this quest was how high the stakes were, how sure the characters had to be of their role in the quest (be sure), and the different twists it takes.

Yes, the quest could have (should have?) been longer and more intense. This is a constant problem I have with these novellas, because they’re so short for high fantasy and I usually feel like I don’t get quite a full plot or view of a world. This suffers from that a little, but overall, the quest was all dark and actiony and filled with bumps our intrepid heroes had to overcome, and that’s good enough for me.

❧ We’re thrown back into the utter horror and darkness that is the Moors … and it’s fabulous.

While I was sorting of hoping we’d maybe get to see a new world in this book when it was first announced, I can’t say I’m disappointed that we get to see the Moors again. It’s an even more in-depth view, with the Drowned Gods and a little history of it and description of the social order, etc. I sort of wish we found out a little more about the world, since some things were just glossed over that I really wanted to understand, but I still loved seeing it again.

While this is absolutely the same world that you might recall from Down Among the Sticks and Bones, the perspective of it has changed (because the characters’ perception of it has changed), and this is a new darker, more dire version of the Moors.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any darker. Some new characters are introduced, and the culture is explored more. I appreciated how it was recognizable as the same world, but it didn’t feel like a repetition from the second book of same old, same old.

❧ ♪♫ Guess who’s back … back again. Jack is back. Tell a friend. ♫♪

It should be painfully obvious by now that Jack is my favorite. Her personality is delightful, and her struggle is so full of heart and heartbreak that I can’t help but to root for her. She deserves her happily ever after, okay? It’s not too much to ask, darn it.

This book particularly explores the connection between the twins and Jack’s struggle with OCD.

Her OCD is really in the forefront and something that at times becomes a barrier that she has to work to overcome. And the sisters thing? Jill does appear in the book, but this book is Jack’s book. She has to figure out what her place is in the Moors and what that means for the relationship with her sister. I was so pleased with Jack’s arc in this, and as much as I love her character, I hope this will be the last book for her, because this arc is perfect. She’s perfect. Roll credits.

❧ Sumi has some of the most delightful, colorful metaphors.

This is as good a reason as any to read this book. I actually had to rework all the quotes I had pulled, because a lot of them were from Sumi and I wanted more variety. But she just had so many good quotes! These were so fun and interesting and pretty much what one might expect from Sumi, and they were a much needed pick-me-up to balance the darkness of the rest of the book.

❧ There were some deep themes touched on in this book that really get you thinking.

I don’t want to say too much, because it’ll quickly get into spoiler territory. But there were some moments that really had me reading a passage over again because it was so deep and poignant. My favorite were the parts where the characters speculated about exactly what it meant to be a hero, even a hero of other worlds. Perhaps what excites me the most about this is what it’ll mean for the future of the series. I have all the questions and none of the answers, but some of these thoughts felt like some heavy foreshadowing for events in the upcoming books, and I can’t wait for them!

❧ Even though this book featured so many characters, I felt like Sumi disproportionately took the spotlight, relegating all the other characters to background roles, and that irked me to no end.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Sumi, and I enjoyed her presence. But we’ve also got Kade and Christopher, and they’re both freaking awesome and have proven themselves from the beginning. Why aren’t they doing more?!

Since everyone made the decision to go on the quest together, I was hoping for more teamwork. For the most part, Sumi seemed to be the end all, be all. She was the glue that held them together, the inspiration, the one with all the answers. By midway through the book, I just wanted to shout, “Staaahp already.”

As much as I love Kade and Christopher, I felt they were so underutilized here, and Cora was almost nonexistent.

In fact, except for Sumi and Jack, all the characters basically only had a purpose when and as they were needed to create a conflict. The rest of the time, they pretty much just hung out in the background.

This was for sure a me thing and not a book thing. But still, I wish there was more focus on the teamwork and everyone’s separate strengths, rather than Sumi being front and center.

❧ There was such a build-up of tension, but the climate fell a bit flat for me and seemed too short and easy.

Considering everything the characters went through to get to that point and how much it was built up, I was expecting some grandiose finale to the overall conflict. But it was over almost as soon as it started, and by the time it finished, all I was left with was the thought: that’s it?! The quest was fun, but the payoff was sort of a letdown for me.

Have you read the Wayward Children series yet? Which book is your favorite? If you found a door, what would you want your world to look like?