Mini synopsis: for this installment, we’re back with Antsy. In true wayward children fashion, it’s quest time! This time, Antsy leads the group on a quest for safety from the students who want too much from her.

I just love this series & expanding the worlds. In the previous book, we met antsy who went to the place where lost things go & is able to find lost doors & open them. I always love the quest books bc we get a little glimpse into other worlds. This time we get to see a little bit of a world that’s been hinted at since book one!!! Without spoilers, it was the perfect little slice & leaves it open to revisit. We also get to see a dinosaur world 🦕 and learn more about former students met in the previous books. This is a horrible review but these books make my heart so happy!

It’s always a little hard to rate these books, but since I liked this less than Lost in the Moment and Found, about the same as Beneath the Sugar Sky and In An Absent Dream, and more than the others in the series, I settled on a 4-star rating.

I was pretty pumped for this book because it follows Antoinette and is a continuation of Lost in the Moment and Found (my favorite book in this series). I will say it lived up to my expectations because I expected to enjoy it but not as much as LITMAF.

I know some people complained about the lack of dinosaurs considering the cover and description of the book, but I knew that the dinosaur features would be minimal, so I knew not to get my hopes up. That being said, I really enjoyed the plot of this book. It was interesting to see Antsy enter Eleanor West’s home and meet the characters we know from previous installments, and it was fun to read about the Store again and the various worlds (including Prism and the dinosaur world!), but I did feel like there was something missing, thus preventing me from giving this book 5 stars.

I appreciate that Seanan McGuire avoided doing what she usually does with this series which includes stuffing 150-200 page books with plots suitable enough for a 400-500 page book. This was a simpler, smaller story that worked well for the length.

I liked seeing Antsy again, and the other characters, but I still feel some disconnect to the side characters.

The writing, as usual, was very pretty and philosophical in some ways. I enjoy the themes of ending cycles of abuse and childhood as well.

Overall, this was a very solid installment. I loved seeing Antsy again and the adventure at the heart of the story, but I still found myself wanting a little more by the end.

🦕🦖🚪🦅

It's hypnotic, you can't just read one book, you have to read the entire series.
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I always wondered what happened to kids who traveled to other worlds and lived so many experiences but then had to return to their world, to bodies that perhaps were foreign to them and where everything had run its course.
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Like in Narnia , in the movie when Edmund tries to enlist in the army and they don't let him because he is a little kid . This book gives a twist to those stories with Eleanor West and her Wayward children's school where children receive psychological help and support to become part of society again.
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In this book we meet Ansty, a girl who mysteriously arrives at school and who has a great gift, she can find anything she wants, and when her schoolmates find out, a crazy race begins to catch her and make her find the door from which they came . But in her group of friends she finds someone to trust and lean on.
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Thanks to Seanan McGuire and Tor Publishing group for give me a copy of this amazing history in exchange for my honest and voluntary opinion.

This was another great addition to the series, as we follow our beloved children as they escape into the in-between and learn more about themselves and the doors. This book can't really be read as a standalone, as it makes references to almost all 8 previous books in the series. We finally get a peek into Kade's world and story as well, which people have been asking for since book 1. I'm excited to see how things are tied up for book 10.

✨Happy Pub Day✨ 
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To another fantastic installment of the Wayward Children series, Mislaid in the Parts Half-Known by @seananmcguire! This series has absolutely stolen my heart and I truly adored this new story that includes past Wayward Children we know and love, but focuses on Antsy.  
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Antsy is still struggling to feel comfortable in a body that has matured beyond her true age at Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children. Soon her classmates find out her talent: she can find absolutely anything, including doors. Antsy and her friends flee on a quest to find the Shop Where the Lost Things Go, making wrongs, right and bringing Antsy home where she belongs.  
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This story was beautiful and Antsy has always had a special place in my heart since she ran away from abuse and lost her biological father. She is a force to be reckoned with and I loved seeing her come into her own. This story was only missing one thing: more dinosaurs! If you haven’t already, I can’t recommend this series and these stories enough. 💚

I love love love this series and especially this latest installment. Antsy has been my favorite character from the recent books and I’m so happy we got more of her in this one. Her entire story arc is one of my favorite things in the series and I’m so pleased how it progressed in this book. It would be a five star just for that. But I do think it’s a bit clunky in terms of story and message and there’s so much going on for such a short installation. And frankly, by the cover, I would have liked more dinosaurs than we got. I still love this series, I’m so excited for more, but I think overall this was a bit weaker than usual, though I loved it for Antsy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Wayward Children is one of my favorite series, and I was trying very hard to finish this ARC before release day and almost made it! Definitely a worthy edition to the series.
Thank you very much to Tor and NetGalley for the ARC!

Rating; Absolutely Loved It, 5 stars

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known is a direct sequel to Lost in the Moment and Found, and it continues Antsy's story after she arrives at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children. Antsy and several of our other beloved characters are breaking the questing rule in this one. Other children discover that Antsy can find lost things, including doors, and they end up on a trek between multiple worlds as we seek to resolve Antsy's story.

I think that this was a really lovely wrap-up to several of our characters' stories, not just Antsy's. But it was a very fitting end to her story as well. Sumi as always seems to dispense nonsensical wisdom that actually hits very deeply. I had a fantastic time following along with the group and I was extremely satisfied by the storylines. I am very curious as to how the next book will wrap everything up as it is currently slated to be the conclusion as far as I am aware. I have come to love these characters over the course of these novellas, and I cannot wait to see how it all concludes.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tordotcom for an eARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Mislaid In Parts Half-Known releases on January 9, 2024.

I loved this one so much! I cried twice while reading and I love that we got to learn more about students from previous books. We also got to go to a new world with dinosaurs, which is pretty amazing. (I will note, though, that the dinosaurs were not a huge part of the story, which I expected from the cover, but still wonderful!)

Antsy is one of my favorite characters from this series and getting a continuation of her story so quickly made my heart so happy. Kade, another favorite, had some great scenes and I am hoping for a Kade-centered book soon! And Cora — lovely, just lovely!

I think this series is very important and should be read by everyone. It is beautiful, fun, engaging, heartbreaking, and just wonderful. I do want to do a full reread this year and I am so excited about getting the chance to do that.

The next adventure in a consistently lovely series about children slipping through magical doorways is a compilation of world's and stories. Not focused on one main character, like most of the others, this one has a few of the children together on a shared adventure through many worlds. It's, like the others, sweet and charming and meaningful, about friendship and growing up and dealing with personal identity. It feels a little more shallow and playful,l than the others, as the kids skip around world's, but it does pull a few stings together and wraps up a few tales

It’s January, and that means that it’s time for one of my favorite parts of the year. Yup! There’s a new Wayward Children novella out this week! I’ve been a fan of this series since Every Heart a Doorway came out in 2016, and the subsequent titles in the series have continued to break my heart and make me fall in love with Seanan McGuire’s writing over and over again. Mislaid in Parts Half-Known is the ninth full novella set in this collection of worlds (McGuire has written several short stories that flesh out some background details of characters as well).

It’s somehow been three years since the last time I reviewed one of these novellas for my blog, which I daresay is a disservice to my readers and friends (and those of you who overlap). I will include a caveat for this title for anyone who isn’t familiar with the series. This is book number 9. This is not a starting point. This book heavily references characters and events from the previous eight books.

Eleanor West’s Home For Wayward Children is a special kind of school, serving as a place for people who have found their ways into other worlds through magical Doors and then made their way back to Earth. The students are given three simple rules at the school, where they learn to adapt to a mundane life (and many wait for their Doors to appear again). “No solicitations. No visitors. No quests.” Rule number three gets broken a lot. In Mislaid, we again find Antoinette, or “Antsy,” our protagonist from book #8, Lost in the Moment and Found. Antsy has found her way to Eleanor’s school and is struggling to fit in (difficult to do when you’re 9 years old, but the magic of the Doors has aged your body to almost twice that) when several of her classmates discover her unique talent. After spending time in a shop of things that are lost from around hundreds of worlds, Antsy can find things again. Most notably for the students at the school, Antsy can find Doors. With sufficient concentration and certainty, she can locate a door to a world once inhabited by the other students. However, as she learned in Lost, the Doors take three days of your life for each one that you open (hence her appearance). She’s understandably hesitant to risk more time to open Doors for the other students.

Eventually, when one of her classmates threatens to force Antsy to find her Door for her, Antsy flees the school, in the company of some of the more adventurous (and friendly) students, Kade, Cora, Christopher, Sumi, and Emily. What follows is a whirlwind tour of worlds we’ve known existed but never visited (including Kade’s Door to Prism) and a lot of references to characters that we know from other earlier books in the series. These continuity nods are almost overwhelming, but serve to tightly pull many threads together in what may be one of the final novellas in the series, as Seanan has said that Kade’s book will likely be the end. While on the run, Antsy and her cohorts make their way back to the store where Antsy used to work, bringing her back into conflict with the shopkeeper who refused to tell her about the cost of opening the Doors.

Not everyone who comes to Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children stays for long, and not everyone who leaves on a forbidden quest gets to come back again. Antsy leads her classmates through the Doors with the best of intentions, but some things (and some people) just have a way of getting lost.

Seanan McGuire remains one of my absolute favorite authors, and Mislaid in Parts Half-Known is a brilliant reminder of why that is. It’s out on store shelves today, so do yourself a favor and grab a copy. My utmost thanks to Tor Publishing Group and Netgalley for the eARC in exchange for a fair review.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2024/01/09/mislaid-in-parts-half-known-a-review/

Rating: 4.63 leaves out of 5
-Characters: 4/5
-Cover: 5/5
-Story: 4/5
-Writing: 5/5
Genre: Fantasy, Magical Realism, Urban Fantasy, YA
-Fantasy: 5/5
-Magical Realism: 5/5
-Urban Fantasy: 4/5
-YA: 5/5
Type: Ebook
Worth?: Yes

Want to thank Netgalley and publishers for giving me the chance to read this book.

For only reading the 1st, 8th, and now 9th book in this series I really do love it. Seanan does a great job at woving dark ribbon into a white cloth. She takes you to these places and somehow you leave a bit of yourself there.

This book is a continuation from book 8 and I was so happy that it was. Wouldn't like if it didn't have me feeling a little bit sad but it was nothing compared to how in awe I was while reading. I don't know if it was super quick or I just got lost in it.

I absolutely love Seanan McGuires YA fantasy series ‘The Wayward Children’. Each novella feels like a whimsical and magical bedtime story, but with added depth, lessons, and wise words.

‘Mislaid in Parts Half-Known’ is book 9 and is virtually a seamless continuation of book 8, ‘Lost in the Moment and Found’. The children who attend the School for Wayward Children, are there because they have special secret doorways that lead to other worlds. Antsy is a newer student and possesses an extraordinary talent for locating anything lost, including lost doors. She is compelled to escape with a small group of friends to return to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go. They encounter enticing temptations, reaffirm their choices, and venture into a world inhabited by dinosaurs!

I’m not sure I’d ever tire of these fantastical little stories. Each one is unique and whimsical and a few are also quite dark and severe. Fans of ya series like ‘Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children’ or ‘A Series Of Unfortunate Events’ will likely really enjoy this series as well.

Anytime I read a novel or story by Seanan McGuire, I find myself drenched in her words and knowing that I have once more encountered an exquisite story to savor. In Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, I am once again astounded by Seanan McGuire’s talent at bringing to life rich characters, diverse backgrounds, and storytelling that enriches the soul.
This story continues where the last Wayward Children’s novel left off, with Antsy, the latest student to pass through the school. Except Antsy is different. She has the ability to find lost things, including doors. And that makes her of interest to the entire school. Kade, Sumi, Cora, Christopher, and new recruit Julie all find themselves helping Antsy as they travel to several worlds to escape their initial problem.
What makes the story work so well is how perfect the pacing is and I absolutely love how Antsy’s abilities work. But I also like her compassion, her caring, and how willing she is to stand up for others when she has the chance to do so. I also appreciate that we get a touch more of Kade’s story, one of my favorite characters. There are changes and endings and while some of them are heartbreaking, that’s what makes a beautiful story. There are unexpected truths, mercy, and justice. I also love the diversity of the worlds we see, just how different they can be from what we see on our earth. That fascinates me and astounds me.
If you liked the previous Wayward Children books, you will love this novel. It will surprise you and possibly make you cry a bit but I think you will find it an exquisite story much like I do. I can’t wait for more.

Mislaid in Parts Half-Unknown, picks up right after Lost in the Moment and Found. We follow Antsy as she integrates into the school and starts meeting other students. While talking to Emily, one of the Whitethorn students, another student overhears that Antsy can find Doors. Wanting to use that against Antsy, she and the OG crew (Kade, Sumi, Cora, Christopher, and now Emily) have to travel through Doors to help Antsy escape.

One of my favorite parts of this installment, is that we finally get a glimpse of Prism, Kade's Door world! While he wasn't a fan, I sure was! And the little plot twist with Sumi before they left Prism! I hope that gets brought up in the next book.

While this didn't end up being one of my new favorites, I did really enjoy it. I love these books so much, and wish she would keep writing them forever. If you haven't read them yet, you should!

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for providing an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

This is honestly one of my most eagerly-followed book series ever, at this point. I don't ever want to see a January without a new Wayward Children book, and it's already making me nervous that next January might be the last one; for such a huge bummer of a month, this series has always done its fair share, for me, in helping to beat the January blues. Seanan McGuire is one of the most gifted and prolific SFF writers working today, and everything I read of hers is a delight.

Now, admittedly, I tend to like the Wayward Children books that focus on a new character and their adventures behind their door better than the "bridging" books (as I call them) about the shenanigans of the rotating cast of characters at Eleanor West's. This is the latter type of book, following Antsy (the protagonist of the previous book, Lost in the Moment and Found) and her experiences at Eleanor West's once it's discovered that she, by nature of the door she walked through, has the ability to find almost anything that's lost. As you might assume, this becomes problematic for her at a school full of children all desperate to find the doors that lead back to the worlds they went to, and Antsy and some familiar faces from previous books (Cora, Kade, and the ever-wonderful Sumi) as well as some new characters introduced two books ago in Where the Drowned Girls Go set off on a quest. Personally, one aspect of this series I've always found problematic is the fact that these books are short—you could rightly call them novellas, I think—and published twelve months apart, which means I don't always remember characters from one book ago, let alone two. McGuire never makes it too difficult to reacclimatize, but I do think that reading these books back to back would probably make for a richer reading experience in some ways.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot, except to say that yes, there are dinosaurs (as the cover suggests) and yes, it's amazing. Apart from that, this wasn't necessarily the strongest book in the series—it gets off to a fairly slow start, and there's what feels like a lot more character monologuing than is typical even for this series (as a devotee of Mike Flanagan's work, I love a monologue, but I can see how another type of reader might find this less fun to read). But it was still delightful, and I stand by what I said earlier: I don't ever want to see a January without a new Wayward Children book.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
A solid new installment, and I like how this one builds on the previous one, once again following Antsy, while the prior books were interconnected standalones. I love how imaginative the worlds of these stories are, especially with this one having dinosaurs. And Antsy having two books to grow didn’t hurt either.

First, a caveat: you must have read the previous novella in this series because this one is the continuation of Antsy's story. However, if you are current on this series you should love this installment as well. Antsy is still an amazing character - her strength to do the right thing is astounding considering that she's only actually nine years old. Many favorite characters reappear in this book as they quest to both a dinosaur world and back to Antsy's store. This is one of my favorite series ever and this story did not disappoint. Seanan McGuire continues to write stories I want to read.

This series is truly one of my all time favorites!

I absolutely adore each and every character that is introduced in this series, and Seanan McGuire’s latest one - Mislaid in Parts Half-Known - definitely did not disappoint! I enjoyed continuing to see Antsy’s story play out and get her ending.

I also loved seeing the group back together for another quest! Kade, Sumi, Cora, and Christopher (and the newly joined Antsy and Emily) were all so fun to follow through their adventures and seeing how they overcame certain tough situations.

As always, McGuire’s language that she used in this book moved me. I smiled, laughed, and teared up. I loved every page of this book!

(Now I’m DYING for Emily’s book!)

The previous book in this series, Lost in the Moment and Found, was my introduction to the Wayward Children and a full introduction to Antoinette aka Antsy. After finding herself in the shop where lost things go and spending her youth (literally) opening doors to all sorts of worlds, Antsy has developed a gift of being able to find anything. Absolutely anything. And now her classmates at Miss Eleanor West’s school are finding out about this talent, and seeing a fast way back to the fantastical worlds they left. Only, it’s not really going to be that easy, is it?

On the run from a fellow pupil determined to use Antsy and her gift, the core group of characters ends up in several worlds they are not equipped for, including a return to the shop where lost things go.

I really enjoyed LitMaF, and it’s great that we get to continue with Antsy’s story so soon – or, in my case, after backtracking through the entire series first! Perhaps that didn’t help, but while I thought this was a lovely slice of story, it didn’t pack any big punch for me.

That said, there’s a lot of happy-making little bits and pieces. Kade is such an interesting character of whom we’ve learned relatively little, so it was great to see his reactions to finding himself back in the world that threw him out. Mostly, though, it’s about bringing some closure to Antsy’s horrible discovery in the shop, and asking her to make decisions about what to now do about it. Oh, via a world with a lot of dinosaurs 😉

Fans of the series will find a lot to like here, and it’s just as well-written and absorbing as the other books. However, it’s not a good place to start – you rather do need the background from the earlier instalments – and it’s not got quite enough ‘oomph’ to be one of my favourites. I do love the sense of closure at the end, though, even if it means saying goodbye to another character. That only ups the intrigue of where everything will go next!