In An Absent Dream - Seanan McGuire

As I was looking for Own Voices writers to read for Pride month, Seanan McGuire's name came up and I thought I'd never heard of her. But turns out a couple of years ago, I devoured her Feed series (you can read my review for Feed here and Deadline here). A post-apocalyptic zombie series written under a pen name, Mira Grant. I had no idea. But since the writing in that series was so solid, I was willing to bet the same would be true for something written under her true name. And I was right. In an Absent Dream is well written. It's captivating.

While this is technically book #4 in the series, it is supposedly a prequel so I felt reading it first would be fine. I hope that's true. I suppose I'll find out when I read book #1 in the series, because I am definitely going to read more of these.

In IAD, 8 year old Katherine Lundy is friendless and lonely as the eldest daughter of the school principal. While not bullied outright, Katherine is shunned and escapes into a world of books. That is until she is walking home from school and winds up in front of a tree with a door. "Be sure" a sign above the door says. And while Katherine certainly can't be sure when she doesn't know what is behind the door, she steps through anyway into a hallway where the artwork on the walls provides the rules of the world she has just entered.

During this initial trip she is befriended by a girl with odd colored eyes named Moon, and an older woman known only as The Archivist. Since names have power, Katherine is known only as Lundy. She isn't the first Lundy to visit The Goblin Market, she's told. And in this way we learn that her father has had his own encounter there. While the Goblin Market is richly described and utterly fascinating, McGuire hides several action sequences from the reader. Depositing Lundy out of the Goblin Market and back home with just a mention of a battle against the wasp queen during which Mockery, another girl we never meet in real time, has been killed.

Lundy returns to the market at age 10 and the tension builds as she further learns the rules of the market under which she is to live. Lundy has a choice to make at age 18, to choose the market or forever be banished. She incurs debts within The Market, which insists its citizens pay "fair value" for everything they obtain. Those who fail to pay fair value slowly turn into birds unless their debts are paid off. It's a complicated system, but one that is so deftly explained by McGuire that its richness is enhanced by its mystery.

Will Lundy return and stay at the Goblin Market? That's a spoiler I do not want to give up because I did not see the ending coming at all in this one and it was not what I was expecting. I'm hoping some of the details of what happens after IAD is covered in the other books since it was a prequel. Will Lundy appear in any of the future books? I certainly hope so.

4/5 Stars.