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A review by bookchainedsoul
Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
4.0
There were two sides of this for me. The first was the plot itself, which was good but not spectacular. The second was the background - the world building, the concept and the characters - which I found spectacular.
The whole candy land reminded me of a short story I had to write in English when I was about 8 years old. I wrote pages and pages about men made of brownies and babies that looked like lollipops. Listening to the description of Whimsy made me rather sentimental and brought me right back to my childhood mentality which was drenched in wonder. I found it completely magical and it was a fantastic experience. I suppose this might be an effect slightly unique to me as I do have a childhood connection, but I struggle to believe that anyone wouldn’t be reminded of silly childhood fantasies when reading this book.
Then there is the general concept of these children lost in the world they were born in. As someone that was wonderfully weird and believed wholeheartedly in magic throughout my childhood, I related hard to some of these characters. Some sentences brought me close to tears through empathy for these children who feel so unattached and distant from the world, something that is so well described in this book. Not to mention the strange solidarity they find within one another even though they can’t really understand one another from being so different but having the same experience.
The only thing that held this back from five stars for me was that the hoping between worlds so easily completely contradicts and undermines the experiences of the children in the first two books. They sacrifice and suffer to open these doors, but now there are magic beads? I understand they came from a different world, but it just didn’t feel right to me.
Overall, an enchanting, sentimental read. I highly recommend this series for that feeling of magic found in Narnia or Wonderland.
The whole candy land reminded me of a short story I had to write in English when I was about 8 years old. I wrote pages and pages about men made of brownies and babies that looked like lollipops. Listening to the description of Whimsy made me rather sentimental and brought me right back to my childhood mentality which was drenched in wonder. I found it completely magical and it was a fantastic experience. I suppose this might be an effect slightly unique to me as I do have a childhood connection, but I struggle to believe that anyone wouldn’t be reminded of silly childhood fantasies when reading this book.
Then there is the general concept of these children lost in the world they were born in. As someone that was wonderfully weird and believed wholeheartedly in magic throughout my childhood, I related hard to some of these characters. Some sentences brought me close to tears through empathy for these children who feel so unattached and distant from the world, something that is so well described in this book. Not to mention the strange solidarity they find within one another even though they can’t really understand one another from being so different but having the same experience.
The only thing that held this back from five stars for me was that the hoping between worlds so easily completely contradicts and undermines the experiences of the children in the first two books. They sacrifice and suffer to open these doors, but now there are magic beads? I understand they came from a different world, but it just didn’t feel right to me.
Overall, an enchanting, sentimental read. I highly recommend this series for that feeling of magic found in Narnia or Wonderland.