I read very little fiction that is shorter than novel length, so this was a new experience for me. I liked the novella as a form of fiction - it allows a concept to be explored, without hanging the weight of too many words on it.

Unfortunately for me, the concept here of ghosts and time and witches and anchoring and dying days just went over my head. I just couldn't really grasp what was being described and how it affected our characters.

Those stars I have given this novel are for McGuire's writing. This is the first piece of hers I've read, and I just delighted in the prose. The language, the sentences, the beautiful balance and rhythm and poetry of it. I luxuriated in it, and would be more than happy to pick up more of her work.

Review in Spanish:

Seanan McGuire es una autora increíblemente prolífica. Con varias series de novelas en marcha, cada año podemos ver varias novedades suyas que van desde relatos en antologías varias, pasando por novelas cortas hasta novelas propiamente dichas. Muchos la conoceréis ya que la editorial Runas va a traducir las novelas Every Heart a Doorway y Down Among the Sticks and Bones. Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day publicada en Tor.com (2017) es una novela corta (o novellete) que reconozco que he tardado bastante en leerme, aunque no por la propia historia en sí, sino por saturación directa de lecturas. Es una obra muy cortita, de unas 100 páginas. Y lo cierto es que una vez me puse me la terminé en una tarde (siempre que dejo una novela a medias durante más de un mes la retomo desde el inicio, por eso a veces no puedo terminar muchos libros que comienzo).

A ver, vamos con una reseña algo breve. Comencemos por un breve resumen de la trama, que me parece muy intrigante. Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day es una historia de fantasmas, desde el punto de vista del espectro. Jenna espera el día de su muerte mientras ayuda a gente en Nueva York. Debido a que es un fantasma, es una tarea bastante complicada, pues no tiene edad y el tiempo no pasa para ella. Se ha quedado atrapada en la adolescencia. No tardará en descubrir cieta amenaza que asola la ciudad y debería superar sus traumas y miedos para socorrer a las gentes de Nueva York, y a sus fantasmas. La trama de esta novela da la sensación de ser bastante ordinaria, pese a los elemenos sobrenaturales. Y ahí está la gracia de la obra de McGuire. Con pocos elementos crea una historia en la cual muchos nos podemos ver fácilmente reflejados. Empatizar con los protagonistas es una tarea sencillisima (y, dejadme que os diga, conseguir algo así me parece magia).

Hay varios temas que sobrevuelan toda la historia de forma constante, como la pérdida, el suicidio o la aceptación de la propia pérdida. Es una historia dura, o por lo menos a mí me ha resultado dura de leer. No complicada, sino con una carga emocional tremenda. Es cierto que tiene varias capas de lectura y un lector que busque entretenerse con una simple historia de una chica fantasma en Nueva York va a encontrar eso (al fin y al cabo, leemos lo que queremos, no lo que el autor quiere que leamos). Si hay algo que me gusta de McGuire (aparte de lo ya mencionado) es su atención al detalle en todo. Formas de actuar, qué dicen los personajes, cómo lo dicen, los lugares, los temas, los olores. Todo. Puede que la historia te guste más o menos, te atrape más o menos, pero es innegable la capacidad para transmitir temas que tiene la autora.

Y quiero finalizar la reseña (que quería ser breve y al final...) destacando los personajes. McGuire tiene una habilidad especial para forjar personalidades. Para crear personajes reales, actuales y vivos. Son personajes que no busca un objetivo concreto en el lector (el que motiva, el que te hace llorar, el que pone en marcha la trama) sino que son personas con miedos, motivaciones y momentos de alegría o tristeza. Esto me parece especialmente complicado, porque todos sabemos que la realidad a veces puede ser no demasiado real, y la ficción necesita ser coherente para no caer en el caos. Por eso digo que McGuire es especialmente buena en este sentido. En definitiva, una obra interesante, que se lee rápido, divertida, entretenida y dura. Os recomendaría comenzar a leer a la autora por las novelas que va a publicar Runas o por relatos suyos. Aunque esta obra es totalmente recomendable.

This is a ghost story. Jenna died while running through the night in the Kentucky wilderness, grieving for the sister who just committed suicide in NYC. She hasn't been able to move on.

Jenna spends time volunteering at a suicide hotline, and the dedication of this book is for those who have considered killing themselves. The poem at the beginning, from which the title is taken, is really powerful and I'm glad I read the book for that alone.

The story itself doesn't hang together really well. There are ghosts, who can give time to or take it from the living. This somehow goes into a ghostly ledger that leads to the date upon which the ghost would have died if not for the tragedy that ghostifies them, but I never really understood the math. Nor did I understand the anchor concept that the author goes into later. You see, the ghosts of NYC, where Jenna dwells now, begin to disappear. This is bad because of something-something-anchor-or-chaos.

Mcguire is good at emotional resonance. You can feel how much she cares about the issue of those who despair. But there is a LOT of hand-wavium in this story. I'm usually pretty good at understaning magic systems but I could not get my head around this one. It felt like the author needed things to be a certain way as a motivation for her plot to go the way she wanted, so she forced it. Interesting characters, weak setting.

This book is about Jenna, a girl who died too soon and became a ghost in order to collect her missing time.
In this novel, people who die earlier than they were supposed to, get stuck on Earth as ghosts and are forced to take time from living beings until they reach the age they were supposed to be when they died. Jenna volunteers on a suicide help-line and only takes time from the living when she feels that she made a difference on the people that called the help-line. Because she's so strict with the amount of time she takes, she became an old ghost.
Then, all the ghosts of New York disappear except Jenna and Delia, an even older ghost. The city needs to have at least one ghost to anchor it so Delia stays in NYC while Jenna looks for the person responsible for the disappearances.
Jenna is a heartbreaking character. I love her and I admire her for the way she deals with what she lost. Brenda and Delia are also great characters with great depth.
The plot gripping and the book is fast-paced. I liked it more than I expected and I think the plot and  characters will stick to memory for some time. It is a fast read ant it made me curious to read more of this author.
I recommend this book to everyone that likes urban fantasy and everyone that wants to read a fresh new take on ghosts and the way they interact with the living.

If I had to select one book to be labelled the perfect supernatural fantasy (and fortunately, I don't), I would choose Seanan McGuire's <em>Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day</em>. There is more story, more power, more poetry, and more creativity in this novella than just about anything I've ever read.

Jenna blamed herself for her sister, Patty's, death. Then Jenna blamed herself for her own death. But Jenna died too soon and so she spends her remaining time volunteering at a suicide prevention hotline in New York. One day Jenna realizes that the ghosts of New York are vanishing until she realizes that she is all there is holding the city in place. Jenna is unintentionally pitted against a corn witch that manages to trap Jenna in glass (a ghost prison of sorts). But Jenna isn't one to sit by and instead takes matters into her own hands.

The only drawback to this book is that it is too short.

McGuire has created a world that feels so real and natural that I half expect to see a ghost as I head in to work. She has created some new 'rules' for the behavior of ghosts in literature (though I'm still personally fond of Jonathan Stroud's <em>Lockwood and Co</em> series' rules) and while establishing these rules McGuire has given us some interesting characters and a mystery that we get caught up in. And she gives us beautiful, lyrical language.

Again...the book is too short to absorb everything that McGuire has put in here. A little more time with the mystery and a little more time to get to know Jenna and those around her wouldn't hurt the book at all, and very likely would draw more people to the book.

This book is number one on my recommendation list and it seals my appreciation for Seanan McGuire and her work.

Looking for a good book? <em>Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day</em> by Seanan McGuire may just be the perfect urban fantasy novella and its only shortcoming is that it is too short.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This one is better for the adults at my public library than my high school.

Unfortunately this title wasn't for me. I'm sure others will enjoy it,

'Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day' by Seanan McGuire is a kind of whodunnit ghost story, with a different premise than I've seen before.

Jenna is still hanging around, but she's no longer living. She is upset over her sister Patty's death, and blames herself. She blames herself for her own death too. In this book, people who die sometime have a debt of time they have to work off. Jenna can do this by taking time from the living, but she chooses not to do that and instead works at a suicide hotline. The problem is that something is making the other ghosts around Jenna disappear, and Jenna may be the only thing that can stop it.

I liked this world and the main character. The vibe of the book is a bit sad and melancholy, but I liked that with this book. Jenna has a pretty sad existence and a lot of guilt to get rid of. She doesn't let this stop her, and that makes her a pretty strong character.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

This is not a bad book, but I felt slightly disappointed when I finished this sad novella about death and suicide. I think the world-building’ premises were full of imagination, the rules of this ghost story original and interesting, but the mystery plot was too weak and didn’t grab my interest and the book delivered less than what I expected when reading the first half of the book.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm already a big fan of Seanan McGuire under her darker fantasy Mira Grant persona, and hed Toby Daye series has been on my tbr pile for a while. No surprise that I really enjoyed this. Jenna is a very likeable heroine who is actually a nice person. It's hard to keep up a convincing portrayal of goodness without falling into saccharine steriotypes or becoming unbelivable, but McGuire walks that line with breath taking poise.

This is a nice self enclosed novella, combining and interesting magical system, a new take on ghosts and gritty urban settings. Well worth a read.

McGuire has a way of creating whole new world settings and then settling the reader in them like an old familiar building. She expertly slips out details to help the reader grasp the new setting, while leaving out whole areas that are tangential but your mind fills in from these hints. In this case, the workings of ghost and witches and the different types of magic. Unique to her other works, and a great read.

An interesting novella but unfortunately not the type of thing I would normally gravitate towards as ghost stories aren't generally my thing and definitely not a patch on Every Heart a Doorway. Not really the piece of short fiction for me at the end of the day, just that bit too weird and out there.

In a departure from her more popular series, McGuire tells a tale of ghosts and urban legends. The characters are haunting (pun intended), but it is not quite what I am used to from Ms. McGuire. The concepts are interesting, but somewhat non-cohesive.

Or rather Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day, by Seanan McGuire, which is a lovely title for a ghost story with many lovely aspects but that is, ultimately, Not For Me.

I picked the book up (from Netgalley, for review; thank you, Netgalley!) because of how much I loved Every Heart a Doorway. I knew it was about ghosts--as in, a story about the "lives" of ghosts, from their point of view, which is a hard world to build, in my opinion. If you're going to show me a vision of the afterlife that looks pretty much exactly like being alive (these are ghosts who live in apartments and have jobs and eat sometimes), I'm already pretty skeptical. There's an element of "moving on," though--you only stay as a ghost if you go before your time--another concept that I'm kind of fuzzy on, but I'm not bad at suspension of disbelief.

Jenna died too soon--when her sister Patty killed herself, Jenna was distraught and died in an accident. Now, years later, Jenna has moved from her small town home to New York City, where she works at a suicide hotline, "earning" her extra time back to get closer to the right time for her death. So, this is the first confusing thing--ghosts can "steal" time from living people. Now, what I think when I hear this is that the person's life gets shorter--maybe their death date moves up or maybe they get older. But what it actually means is that the ghost takes some of the person's age--the person gets younger, winds back the time that the ghost takes, and the ghost gets older, closer to their death date/moving on.

Ghosts can also give time--get further from their death date, stay on earth longer, and by giving those minutes or hours or years to a human, cause the person to age. Apparently most ghosts are eager to move on, so they steal time from people in a win-win situation--people get younger, ghosts get older and move on sooner. But a few ghosts want to stay, and they tend to find bad people and give them back time to keep away from their death date.

But Jenna's odder--she has somehow decided that she has to earn the right to move on. So she works at a suicide hotline, and whenever she talks someone into living longer, she logs that time and only then allows herself to take that time from someone. This was really my first sticking point; I really can't figure out why Jenna would put this artificial gate between herself and the thing she wants--to be with her sister Patty. I didn't get a feel for Jenna's relationship with Patty, either, which was supposed to be the driving force of the novel.

The actual story begins when ghosts start to disappear from the city. Jenna and a few allies are the only ones to investigate--her ghost landlady, a local witch, a homeless woman. They follow the trail which leads them, for some reason, into Jenna's past.

Talking it through, I think this was part of the trouble I had with the story--there were a lot of different pieces that ended up dovetailing for no particular reason. Jenna's personal story and the problem of the missing ghosts are mostly unrelated, except for a lot of ways they're related. A lot of the plot is driven by coincidence, in the end, which doesn't work as well for me.

What I will say, though, is that Seanan McGuire can write. The day to day moments of Jenna's life are smooth and lovely to read, and if I didn't understand a lot of the emotional content, the way it's described was not the problem. I didn't love this book, but I absolutely want to read much more by this author.

I think this is the most unique ghost story I've read in a very long time. I can't remember this story line ever. Jenna's sister died away from home and she is shattered and goes for a run in the woods. She dies in an accident before her time to go. Now, many years later she is working in the big city at a suicide prevention hotline and getting closer to her actual time she was to die. Her life is governed by 42 minute increments. A local witch is her only friend. A remarkable book with a few twists that have you regretting every minute you aren't reading this story. I am definitely going to be reading Seanan McGuire's other books.

Sometimes when you die you become a ghost and still live in our world and interact with everything for the most part. You can take time from people and make them younger and it pushes the ghost closer to the time they can actually depart this world. Ghosts have been hunted for this gift by witches. Jenna is trying to find out what happened to her sister Patty and why she didn’t become a ghost like Jenna. Jenna is working to support her apt and rescue elderly cats from the shelter. She also works as a suicide hotline operator and mostly keeps to herself as she is marking time in this world.

Ghosts have gone missing in NYC and Jenna teams up with a witch to find out where they have gone. The story is good and the story ends on a sweet but sad note. I really enjoyed it and it is nice to read a contained story that doesn’t leave you hanging.

usk or Dark or Dawn or Day, besides having a title that is a heck of a mouthful, is a slim novel that took me way too long to get through due to work, family issues and other commitments that limited my reading time. I only mention this because I feel some of the day-to-day life issues severely got in the way of my being able to fully enjoy and escape into this book. When you can only enjoy a chapter or two a day, and even then are unable to escape interruption, it can really mess with the story's pacing (at least in my opinion...). So, these issues are on me, but I ultimately felt this was a four-star read and I dug the heck out of it. If I were able to really sink in and inhabit the world a bit more freely, this might have been a fiver just for the writing alone. I love McGuire's word-smithing, and her prose here reaches an almost lyrical level at times.

Jenna, our lead, is a dead girl living in New York City and volunteering for a Suicide Prevention hotline when she's not working as a coffee barista to pay rent and buy cat food for the elder felines she shelters. Jenna died thirty-some years before, running away from home to escape the death of her sister. Now she's a ghost, trying to earn back enough time to reach what should have been her actual dying day.

McGuire does a terrific bit of world building, but some of the early proceedings felt a little too stuffy with info dump on the rules of haunting, dying days, and assorted lore revolving around ghosts, their physical manifestations, and relationships (or lack of) with the world's various witches. Oh, yeah, there's witches, too, like Brenda, a corn witch, who leads Jenna through a maze (maize? Get it? Ha.) of sorts in the book's latter half. It's pretty dense stuff, and makes the book feel thicker than it actually is.

There's also a good, solid emotional core behind all the plotting. I get why Jenna volunteers, and she's a good soul all around. She's a feel-good heroine without being all sugary, buttery saccharine sweet, and is, bottom line, just a really good person. I dug that, too. In order to reach her moment of legit moving on, there's all kinds of shady business she could get up to, but McGuire avoids the dark shenanigans and brooding hero with a past that often feels like a staple of Urban Fantasy. While there are elements of darkness in the story itself (this is, after all, a story of ghosts and witches, and some dark deeds as the book progresses), it never feels oppressive. Jenna is, after all, a cat lady six felines deep, and that seems to generate a measure of coziness all its own. Given some of the sort of books I enjoy reading, particularly McGuire's Mira Grant authored books, it's a bit refreshing to read a title that's just plum ol' nice.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire is a novella with a difficult-to-remember title until you realise the list is chronological. I didn't actually realise it was a novella at first, only checking to make sure it wasn't a sequel to something I hadn't read when I requested it. I also hadn't really paid attention to the blurb, which made the opening prologue especially powerful for me.

When her sister Patty died, Jenna blamed herself. When Jenna died, she blamed herself for that, too. Unfortunately Jenna died too soon. Living or dead, every soul is promised a certain amount of time, and when Jenna passed she found a heavy debt of time in her record. Unwilling to simply steal that time from the living, Jenna earns every day she leeches with volunteer work at a suicide prevention hotline.

But something has come for the ghosts of New York, something beyond reason, beyond death, beyond hope; something that can bind ghosts to mirrors and make them do its bidding. Only Jenna stands in its way.

From the title and cover, I kind of thought this book would be more creepy horror than it was. I wouldn't actually call it horror at all. It's about ghosts, but from the point of view of the main character being a ghost herself and integrating into society without most being being any the wiser. It also contains the investigation of weird shenanigans and some heroics, as most fantasy books do. It also deals quite a bit with suicide, which is how the protagonist's sister died, suicide prevention, and what it means to die when it's "your time" or not (the latter through a fantastical lens).

The opening hit me hard and the rest of the novella kept me eagerly turning pages through my jetlag. Jenna is a compelling first person narrator, taking us through her day-to-night life, her perceptions of New York — including the New York only people like her can see — and some of the realities of being a ghost. I greatly enjoyed the alternate vision of New York McGuire painted in this book, as well as her vision of ghost life.

I really enjoyed Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day and highly recommend it to fans of ghosts, othered or liminal cities, novellas and Seanan McGuire. I would recommend this to readers who enjoyed Every Heart a Doorway (although I will note I didn't like Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day quite as much as the other novella). This novella also sold me on the soft goal of trying to make my way through McGuire's back catalogue, so expect to see more of her books on this blog in the future.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: January 2016, Tor.com novella series
Series: No.
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

From the opening lines of this book, I was hooked. The premise is simple - ghosts are real and they are everywhere. What the author does really well is give us a glimpse into this other world by telling us little details without overloading us with exposition. There are only a couple of places where I felt that we as readers needed to see what was happening instead of being told, which is very difficult to accomplish in a book of less than 200 pages. This is another feather in the cap of the author - it is rare to find a book that tells a complete story in so short a number of pages and leaves the reader feeling completely satisfied. The characters are great and the situations are well constructed. My one issue is I felt that the ending was a little lackluster, but other than that, a really enjoyable book that I will return to again and again.