Laughter at the Academy, by Seanan McGuire

Laughter at the Academy by Seanan McGuire 

TL;DR - I recommend this book of short stories to anyone who likes mad scientists, broken dolls, Peter Pan, and stories with dark twists.

I first encountered Seanan McGuire when I picked up her novel Feed, which is written under the pseudonym Mira Grant.  I was expecting very little as I was not a huge fan of zombie fiction at the time.  I wouldn't say I was extremely well versed in zombie fiction, but rather that I had a lot of preconceptions about the genre based on the TV and movies that I'd seen on the subject.  But N. K. Jemisin had given the book five stars, and I was going down a rabbit hole of reading books that authors I have much regard for (N. K. Jemisin, Robin Hobb, Patrick Rothfuss, and Rick Riordan) were rating highly.  

I came away from that series - full of political intrigue, conspiracy plots, cloning, zombie kangaroos, and scientists who are either mad or the only sane ones there (or both) - with a new appreciation for the genre.  I had never considered an option where society reforms post-apocalypse in any organized, rational way. 

Years later I have read as many of her works as I have been able to get my hands on.  Always a lover of urban fantasy, I ran through her October Daye series as if it were the water I depended on for life.  She introduced me to my own fear of deep water with her Rolling In The Deep series.  She uncovered in me a love of cryptozoology, and mad scientists who use nursery rhymes, and taught me that parasites can be people too.  I learned a lot about doorways.  

So no surprise I came away from Laughter at the Academy (a book of short stories) both better for the experience and frustrated at all the stories that I can barely allow myself to hope might one day be expounded upon.  

I wish I could write a love note to McGuire that expressed how deeply and academically I adore the way her brain works.  In a way that doesn't make me sound like I'm going to be hiding in a shrubbery outside her house one day, of course.  Yes, I might be raising her onto a pedestal, but I have many such mental pedestals which host a number of people who I know are just as human as me and yet have somehow managed to change the way I think and shape the way I approach every future work of fiction.  

Seanan, your work is a doorway in its very own right. After discovering the world that hid beyond I find myself changed, as a reader, and unable (unwilling) to stop exploring the ideas you've introduced me to.  I thank you and curse you for that, for it seems there is never enough content out there to satisfy me and yet somehow my To Read list is never empty.  I hope you get the chance to write everything that you wish to write, and enough time to do so at a pace that contents you.