RogerBW's Blog

2017 fantasy, first released as a web serial. When Baba Yaga's house walks into Summer's back yard, she sets off on an adventure…

Once upon a time there was a girl named Summer, whose mother loved her very very very much.

This book is a strange beast, I think for two reasons discussed in the afterword: it started out as the author's file of ideas to use some time that didn't fit in to what she was currently writing, and it was released first as a web serial.

So it's both chaotic and bitty. It's a response to portal fantasy such as the Narnia books, with a child who acts more than most like a real child (for example, Summer is allowed to be scared, and have bad dreams about things that have happened, without that disqualifying her as a protagonist); at the same time, it's largely a series of encounters in and with separate strange places that are each complete in themselves, rather than forming part of a larger coherent mythology.

In that respect it rather reminded me of The Phantom Tollbooth or The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, similarly fantasy for children in which for me the picaresque feel of the series of individual events takes precedence over the greater story or the consistency of worldbiulding. So it's great fun to read, and I suspect it would be even greater fun to read at a chapter a week, but taken over the space of a few days there's something of a whiplash of both subject matter and tone.

By the end none of the things wrong in Summer's life has been put right by her experiences. Some of those problems did affect what she did in Orcus, which is good – she's not just a generic placeholder protagonist for the reader to see as themselves, but someone with individual characteristics – but it left me feeling slightly unsatisfied.

There's a wolf who turns into a house at night, and is on the watch for house hunters. There's Reginald Hoopoe, a rusticating dandy who talks in Regency cant. There's a stained-glass saint in purple sneakers. There's the Queen-in-Chains and Zultan Houndbreaker. There's a weasel.

"Go on, girl," she said, "go on. It's only a weasel."

"Does it bite?" asked Summer warily.

"Of course it bites. It's a weasel. They don't kill their prey with pretty words and poisoned sweetmeats."

All of these things are individually great, but somehow when they're all stuffed into a single narrative they start to feel forced. So I liked it quite a bit, but I'm sure I'd have liked it more if I'd read it spread out in serial form.