Audiobook
A young girl discovers a portal to a land filled with centaurs and unicorns in Seanan McGuire's Across the Green Grass Fields, a standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-wining Wayward Children series.
“Welcome to the Hooflands. We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”
Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.
When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to "Be Sure" before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines―a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.
But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem…
This is definitely one of my favourites in the series.
It does the "subverting fantasy hero clichés" thing in a way that I like, it's an extremely cozy story for many chapters, although quite terrible in others, and the relations between the different species in the hooflands with all that stereotyping are so well written, and all the characters aaah, I love it. Also the whole story smells like sweaty horse.
Wayward Children is an excellent series. McGuire has incredible talent especially how she writes young people. I also liked how the author portrayed intersex, and the difficult conversations. The prose is so good too. No, this isn't my favorite of the series (that's #4) but this is a solid entry and sets up the next part of the series.
