The Stats
📖 BOOK REVIEW⠀📚
BOOK: Juice Like Wounds
AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire
@SeananMcGuire
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Publisher: Kindle Edition
Published: July 13th 2020
The Review
Okay, book 4.5 seems a bit weird as a concept, but if you aren’t used to weird then you haven’t been reading the Wayward Children Series. Juice Like Wounds happens in between chapters during In an Absent Dream. It’s the story of Lundy, Moon, and the previously unseen Mockery beat the Wasp Queen in the pomegranate grove. It isn’t a long story. If you’ve read In an Absent Dream, then you already know how it ends.
Juice Like Wounds gives you a bit of context as to why Lundy was so traumatized by Mockery’s death, and deepens Lundy’s primary character flaw. While she understands the concept of fair value in small scale trades, she ignores it when it comes to large scale life.
It also explains how monsters even came about in the Goblin Market. Though this doesn’t explain the monsters anywhere else. Is this where the monsters come from? Here, we see that those who don’t give fair value by neglect or bad circumstances are turned into birds. Those that do so out of malice, greed, or ego transform into the monsters.
What I do like it that, the way this was written, you could stop reading In an Absent Dream partway through, read Juice Like Wounds, and return to Absent Dream, and none of the story is ruined for you. In fact, Juice Like Wounds gives better foreshadowing for the twist at the end of Absent Dream.
I feel like, with all the focus we’ve had on Lundy, we aren’t done with the character yet, and the quest we see in Come Tumbling Down is a diversion so this doesn’t become the Lundy show.
I voluntarily read this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
The Summary
In the course of every great adventure there are multiple side-quests. All too often these go unreported—perhaps because the adventurers in question fail to return to the main narrative due to death or other distractions, and sometimes because the chronicler of the events decide to edit out that part of that particular history for reasons of their own (historians are never infallible)—but occasionally we get another window into our heroes’ world.
In Juice Like Wounds we once again get to meet Lundy, and some of her companions. Lundy’s main adventure is detailed in In an Absent Dream (which is nominated for a Hugo Award, this year!) and you should definitely read that. Before or after this tale is up to you. Remember: side quests are fun. For the reader, at least…