Beneath the Sugar Sky - Seanan McGuire

Title: Beneath the Sugar Sky
Author: Seanan McGuire
Format: Hardcover 
Rating: 5 Stars

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Beneath the Sugar Sky returns to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children. At this magical boarding school, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the "real" world.

Sumi died years before her prophesied daughter Rini could be born. Rini was born anyway, and now she’s trying to bring her mother back from a world without magic.

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Beneath the Sugar Sky, the third book in Seanan McGuire's Eleanor West series lives up to it's predecessors in the best possible ways.  Although this book is marketed as a standalone, it works best if you've read Every Heart a Doorway, because there are references to and characters from the first book here.  (Nancy, for example, makes a return.)

So, a quick rundown: Cora and Nadya are swimming when Rini lands in the lake with a splash.  They talk with her, and eventually end up on a little quest to revive Rini's mother Sumi.

I don't want to give too much away because I really want you all to go read this book!  Let's move on to some thoughts:

* I love that this book is dark.  (Apparently, the author also writes darker fiction under the pseudonym Mira Grant.  I find myself curious as to how much darker the books could be, because the Eleanor West books are dark.)

* When Rini fell out of the sky into the lake and her cake dress dissolved, I thought it was so hilarious that she kept asking if Nadya was uncomfortable with her vagina.  I think it was interesting to have that in the book, because so many people born or raised in America are so uncomfortable talking about or looking at our bits, or at others bits.  So, to have someone who was so refreshingly comfortable being naked was cool.

* I like that they actually left the school and went on an adventure in this one.  It was nice to seem them explore a little bit of Nancy's world and see what Confection is like.

As with the previous two books, the plot in this book is well developed and works the whole way through.  The author does a great job of writing a story that holds together well, even when the characters are fighting their way to the cake queen, or staring at Nancy in the hall of the dead.  The story works. 

The characters in this story are also well developed, and distinct from each other.  They each have their own traits, their own characteristics, and they stand apart from each other.  They have stuff in common, but they are distinct from each other and have their own quirks and characteristics. 

I've heard that the author plans on doing more books in the series, and I can't wait.  If you haven't read this book, or the books before it, go do that right now - you won't be disappointed.

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Click the pics below to read my reviews for the first two books in the Eleanor West Home for Wayward Children Series: