Every Heart a Doorway

I have pretty mixed feelings about this one. It's built on an incredible idea, but the novella format isn't long enough to do it justice, and the execution is merely okay.

The setup is very strong. All of the Narnia and Alice in Wonderland type stories, those are all true and happened to different people in different worlds. (The nature of the worlds varies and can be extremely dark and not necessarily what you might think of as desirable, but they are all appealing to the personalities of the people who stumble into them.) But most people don't get to stay in their Wonderland, and they end up back in the “normal” world, wanting nothing more than to get back.

So what happens to you if you're a former Wonderlander and now you're back in this lame world, unable to return to the much better place in which you sojourned? Well, it's pretty hard to cope, and their families can't understand and think they've gone mad, so they get sent to, ostensibly, a school to help them get past their delusions. But actually all the students are former Wonderlanders, and the people who run it know they aren't delusional. A little over a third in, the story takes another, darker turn.

Neat premise, right? I absolutely love the kind of stories that make up the building blocks of this one – I loved Neverwhere, for example – and this was recommended to me on that basis. But it's not one of those stories, it's a meta-story about those stories. Unfortunately, there isn't all that much meat there past the premise.

The protagonist, Nancy, is a returnee from a world that just... doesn't offer much of interest to most people, I don't think. It's a bit difficult to relate to her in that way – why would she want to go back there so badly? But you can accept that she does and move on. Nancy's friends tend to be the other misfits, all of whom are a little too cool for school and a little too quick with the repartee. The ones who aren't Nancy's friends are pretty one-dimensional, because there's not enough time for any real character development. I think I can remember one of their names.

After the first third, the “main” plot begins, but it's over before it starts and there's never all that much mystery. You'll figure out a bunch of what's going on pretty quickly, and what you don't the characters will, and then you're at the climax, which goes awfully quickly and with minimal drama, and then you're at the end. The ending is rather too pat as well, and while I don't want to spoil anything, it's not well-supported by the text.

I debated between two and three stars, and for now I've settled on two, although I might change my mind and edit it back up later. If three stars is “I liked it” and two stars is “I didn't like it,” well, for once neither feels quite right. I liked the idea and I wish I liked the end result a bit more. But it's not bad, just... it's a pity it doesn't build more out of the building blocks it has. It's entertaining enough, but the wasted potential is a shame.