Review: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire (2021)
A found-family story that ultimately fails at building a compelling plot.
Across the Green Grass Fields is a novella by Seanan McGuire, the sixth in the award-winning Wayward Children series, and was a finalist for the 2022 Hugo Award for best novella.
The Wayward Children series focuses on children who either stumble into fantastical worlds (think Narnia or Oz), or have left them and are dealing with the repercussions of coming home. Across the Green Grass Fields is the former, detailing how a Regan, a young girl, accidentally enters a magical doorway leading to The Hooflands, a realm of centaurs, unicorns, and minotaurs—really any fantastical beast with hooves. (For more about the Wayward Children series, I discuss it more in depth in my review for the fifth entry: Come Tumbling Down).
Regan is a young girl who has doting parents and a deep love of horses, but is enmeshed into a toxic friend group that she can’t find the confidence to leave. As puberty hits her friend group and Regan lags behind her peers, her loving parents sit her down and have a conversation with her: she is intersex, born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, and may never naturally undergo puberty. She takes this news surprisingly well, all things considered, and heads to school the next day, upset but not distraught. Regan makes a mistake in confiding in the wrong friend and everything crashes down around her, and while she runs away from school, she unwittingly enters the doorway into the Hooflands.
“There was an odd finality in that moment, one that would come back to haunt her over the next six years, long after the search parties had given up combing the woods and the flyers had faded to illegibility in the store windows where they hung, endlessly hopeful, endlessly futile.”
I’ll be honest: out of all the Wayward Children books, this one appealed to me least. I had absolutely no interest in a world full of unicorns and centaurs and whatever else might clippity-clop into the picture. McGuire once mentioned that this was a book for “horse girls”, and well—I am very very far away from being one of those. But ultimately, everything I expected not to like about this book I ended up enjoying. The Hooflands are surprisingly enjoyable, and McGuire grabs from a wide set of mythology to populate her world with unique ungulates. Regan herself has a compelling backstory and quickly integrates herself into the world. I actually ended up liking the land of unicorns by the end, and was sad to leave it.
“Such is the dichotomy of forests. Even the smallest remembers what it was to cover nations, and the shadows they contain will whisper that knowledge to anyone who listens.”
Ultimately, ATGGF is a story about found family. Regan enters all alone, on the worst day of her life, and is lovingly welcomed. Across the book she builds a bond with her saviors, and much of the book revolves around them doing acts of kindness—both small and large—to one another to really hammer home the sense of belonging. This is well-done, with McGuire’s consistently strong writing helping create a sense of overwhelming coziness in The Hooflands. There’s a lot here that falls under the “comfort read” category, and it’s a perfect marriage between tone and setting.
“There’s nothing wrong with being limited, as long as you have people around to make sure those limitations don’t get you hurt.”
Sadly, the book spends so much time getting comfortable that it forgets to do much of anything worthwhile. There is the barest semblance of a plot in the background; a quest for Regan to undertake and the mutual understanding that she is there for A Purpose. It never really matures, and is hurriedly wrapped up in the last two dozen pages in a rather underwhelming and abrupt fashion. It seems to be the reason for new plot developments to occur here and there, but they are quickly overcome and the book settles back into its default state of coziness.
Similarly, there seems to be clear thematic direction for the novel at the beginning: Regan is intersex (which I’ve never seen in a character before), and it strongly hits on the message of “there’s no wrong way to be a girl”. There’s stuff here to work with, but it isn’t taken advantage of. Regan’s condition is almost never mentioned and she never really reflects on it at any depth. In fact, she seems to lack agency throughout the book, until the abrupt ending—happy to drift through this world like a leaf in the breeze, following the guidance and direction of others. While this provides a cozy tour of her surroundings, it also makes for a very weak character.
“Clay shaped into a cup was not always destined to become a drinking vessel; it was simply shaped by someone too large to be resisted.”
Thematically, “there’s no wrong way to be a girl”, is a strange choice because 1) it’s basically the over-arching message of the Wayward Children series as a whole, 2) it was explored much better and rather explicitly in the second entry (Down Among the Sticks and Bones), and 3) it is very quickly abandoned once the unicorns start showing up. What you’re left with as a reader is a cozy world, but one that doesn’t really manage to tell any worthwhile stories within it. Timidly interacting with a background plot or revisiting recycled themes just doesn’t cut it six books into the series, and certainly doesn’t justify the focus on a new character (particularly given that the cast is already crowded and there are others that have yet to have their stories told).
“Regan thought it must be nice, to believe children were innocent angels incapable of intrigue or cruelty.”
Ultimately, Across the Green Grass Fields fails for me because of these reasons. There’s still a lot here to be happy with, but the lingering taste in my mouth is one of missed potential. This is the first true miss of Wayward Children in my eyes.
You may like Across the Green Grass Fields if:
You enjoy cozy stories about found families, and don’t care much about if they go anywhere.
The idea of a world full of unicorns and centaurs makes you giddy.
You’re interested in seeing an intersex character in fiction.