Title: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known
Series: Wayward Children, #9
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: Tor
Publication date: January 9, 2024
Length: 160 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher

Dinosaurs and portals, and a girl who can find both in the latest book in the Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning series.

Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children.

When her fellow students realize that Antsy’s talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, she’s forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise.

Along the way, temptations are dangled, decisions are reinforced, and a departure to a world populated by dinosaurs brings untold dangers and one or two other surprises!

A story that reminds us that finding what you want doesn’t always mean finding what you need.

What can you say about the 9th book in a series? Other than that’s it’s terrific, of course! The book opens with a paragraph that beautifully sums up the overarching plot of the series:

Children of the doors know about being mislaid. They are well-acquainted with stepping through an opening or following a passage that should lead from here to there, and finding themselves someplace entirely else, someplace entirely new. It is possibly their only truly unifying experience, the one thing they have so completely in common that there’s no need to even question it: once upon a time, they took an impossible step, opened an impossible portal, and ended up in a terribly, horribly possible place.

As the newest Wayward Children book, Mislaid in Parts Half-Known keeps the overarching storylines of the series moving forward while introducing some new twists, rules, and situations for the characters to deal with. Some of the installments in the series have more of a stand-alone feel, although they’re all connected, but this is not one of those. Mislaid is absolutely a sequel, mainly in regard to book #8 and its main character Antsy, but it also continues the stories of several other characters, and it’s helpful (I’d even say critical) to be familiar with them.

The previous book, Lost in the Moment and Found, focused on a young girl named Antsy, who runs away from a dangerous situation in her home and finds herself in the world of a store that’s actually a nexus point between worlds. Antsy’s new home in the store is mostly delightful — she’s safe, after all, and has the opportunity to visit countless new worlds through the portal doors that appear and disappear. But, as she discovers by the end of the book, there’s a price to be paid, and the book ends with Antsy returning, quite changed, to her home world and finding her way to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

In Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, Antsy is settling in at the school, but doesn’t actually quite fit. She’s actually much younger than the other students, and their portal worlds are all so different that she can’t seem to connect with many of them. When a particularly dangerous student threatens Antsy’s safety, she and a handful of others escape through another door and begin a new quest.

Readers of the prior books in the series will be familiar with Antsy’s companions — Sumi, Kade, Christopher, Cora and a few newer faces too. As they flee, they’re also searching for possibilities. Most of the students yearn to return “home” — that is, to their lost worlds beyond the doors — and Antsy has the unique ability to find any door. So if they can actually go home, should they?

There are some interesting discussions about what it means to be sure about a choice, and how they’ll know when or if they’re ready, as well as conversations about whether someone truly still belongs in the place they consider home. These introspective bits are lovely, as the various characters get a chance to shine and express themselves, even in the midst of fleeing from dangerous goblins and dinosaurs.

Yes, dinosaurs. The cover doesn’t lie! The group does visit a primeval world populated by dinosaurs, and it’s amazing. I’m not going into further detail — read it and find out!

The challenge I had with this book, as hinted at earlier, is keeping track of the characters. Yes, I’ve read the entire series so far, but since they’re released at a rate of one per year, it’s been a few years since I’ve thought about some of these characters. Thank goodness there are wikis out there! I definitely had to go look up some backstories. At some point, rereading the whole series from the beginning might be a good idea!

If you’ve been curious about the Wayward Children series, I would recommend against starting with this book. It won’t make any sense! It’s such a great series, though, that I would strongly recommend picking up a copy of Every Heart a Doorway — I bet you’ll want to keep going!

I really enjoyed Mislaid in Parts Half-Known. It ends with certain characters spinning off into new directions, and leaves much still to be discovered in the wider world of the school. I can’t wait to find out where Wayward Children goes next.