Into the Windwracked Wilds (A. Deborah Baker)

Into the Windwracked Wilds
The Up-and-Under series, Book 3
A. Deborah Baker
Tordotcom
Fiction, MG Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Straight-laced Avery and free-spirited Zib have come a long way, literally and figuratively, since they climbed the wall from their ordinary neighborhood into the Up-and-Under, a land of strangeness and wonder and danger aplenty. With them now travel Niamh, the drowned girl, and the Crow Girl who once traded her heart and name to become a murder of crows, which only occasionally comes together to be a person. Once more, they've found the improbable road, which will lead them to the Impossible City (and, if they can find the lost Queen of Wands and restore her to the throne, eventually back to the world they came from)... but the road proves as capricious as ever when it drops them into the Saltwise Sea without so much as a by-your-leave.
When they finally end up on land again (courtesy of a kindly mosasaur), it's in the domain of the Queen of Swords, monarch of Air and creator of monsters. If Zib and Avery have learned nothing else in the Up-and-Under, it's that royalty are best avoided at all costs, and the Queen of Swords may be one of the most dangerous of the lot... yet the improbable road leads straight through her castle. They'll need all their wits about them to escape her clutches, but even then the passage will require sacrifice, for nothing - not even safety - comes without a cost in this land. Something else they have learned, unfortunately, is that costs are almost always much, much higher than they realize, and bargaining with the Queen of Swords may cost them more than they can afford to lose if they ever mean to return home.

REVIEW: The third book in the Up-and-Under series maintains the quick pace, wild whimsy, and sometimes surreal aesthetic of the previous volumes, with some deeper, occasionally cutting undertones and passages. Once again, Zib and Avery find their friendship tested, as Zib's long-ago trading away of something precious to Avery comes back to haunt them both. Neither are the same children they were at the start of their adventures, having learned and seen and done much together, but even though they've grown closer, there's still some inherent friction due to their opposing natures. Their companions also have parts to play and stories to tell, particularly the Crow Girl, who was long ago turned into what she is by the Queen of Swords. The journey takes several twists and turns, as they pick up a new ally and make a new enemy (or, rather, deepen an old enemy's ire). Here and there I noted more echoes of the story Middlegame in offhand passages and comments; the Up-and-Under series started as a spinoff of that book, an in-world beloved children's adventure secretly written by a dark alchemist encoding secrets of the craft, even though it stands alone fine (and is geared at a significantly younger audience than Middlegame). These echoes have been present throughout the series, but I noticed them more in this volume for some reason. There were a few points where things felt just a little too jumbled and convoluted even for the inherently nonsensical adventure, but in general it's in keeping with the previous two installments, setting up the fourth and (presumably) final volume, due out in October 2023. It made for a nice change of pace.

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