E-book
English language
Published Jan. 7, 2019 by Tom Doherty Associates.
This fourth entry and prequel tells the story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should.
When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she's found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well.
Really good though. I'm still enjoying the different worlds of the series.
Somehow, unlike the other books in the series, this one struck me as deliberately contrived towards error. Probably personal bias - the writing is just as good, the descriptions probably the best so far - just not thing perhaps?
There's an interesting take on modern economics in here. Young Lundy goes through the magic portal and arrives in the "Goblin Market" and the next decade of her life is consumed by the peculiar economic system they've got in the market.
Mild spoilers follow.
Everything one receives in the market comes at a cost. This includes finding a place to sleep for the night, having a glass of water, a bit of food, or just enjoying a warm bath. The cost is always referred to as "fair value" but that's on a sliding scale depending on how desperate you are. For the characters in the story this usually ends up being taken on as debt, and people in the Goblin Market who don't pay their debts your are magically disfigured, part by part, into a freakish bird thing. At first, our protagonist wonders how people let this disfigurement happen to …
There's an interesting take on modern economics in here. Young Lundy goes through the magic portal and arrives in the "Goblin Market" and the next decade of her life is consumed by the peculiar economic system they've got in the market.
Mild spoilers follow.
Everything one receives in the market comes at a cost. This includes finding a place to sleep for the night, having a glass of water, a bit of food, or just enjoying a warm bath. The cost is always referred to as "fair value" but that's on a sliding scale depending on how desperate you are. For the characters in the story this usually ends up being taken on as debt, and people in the Goblin Market who don't pay their debts your are magically disfigured, part by part, into a freakish bird thing. At first, our protagonist wonders how people let this disfigurement happen to them when it is so easy to just work a little bit and avoid debt-disfigurement. If only it was that easy. People living in a magical world don't want to just spend every day doing other people's dirty laundry (as the characters here do for a time) they want to go out and have adventures. There's your markets-are-terrible message.
Anyways, I do like that all of the action takes place off-page. That allows for a laser-sharp focus on the messages about work and debt and markets. It's a short novel, afterall.
Note that the book does start out a bit slow, as the author spends the first 20% of so talking in great detail about how different the protagonist is from all the other little children. That part was a bit on the nose.
This is a prequel to the other three books in the "Wayward Children" series. I guess you can read it first. Or not.
There's a strange calm in already knowing how a story ends. In An Absent Dream is filled with sadness and wonder, too-clever bargains and barely-survived scrapes. Lessons of friendship, loss, fair value, and the weight of promises. Welcome to the Goblin Market.
This focuses on someone whom we met earlier in the series as far as the reader is concerned, but in her own timeline she is barely getting started. This creates a sense of tragedy and wonder all tangled together as we slowly learn the reason for the bargain waiting in the end of the story. The pacing is very well handled, skipping what would only bog the story down, lingering on her indecision just enough to make the reader understand what would drive here to her eventual choice. I love Moon's wildness contrasting Lundy's steady attention and determination.
The story is great, I like this version of the …
Ok, so this just isn't how books work. McGuire leads us up to the climactic battle and then...the next chapter opens the next day as they recouped from their wounds. Not just once but again and again throughout the book. I know this is a Thing she's doing on purpose, perhaps focusing on the interstitial days that actually make up a life? But it's jarring and distracting and I never did like Lundy that much anyway. The setting, as always, is fascinating and creative but I just could not get into this.
This is a fascinating series.
