Portal Fiction to Get Lost In
We’re right in the middle of big time commercial holiday season and while this can mean a lot of good things, it also means sometimes feeling overwhelmed. There’s last minute shopping and post office trips and cooking, and for a lot of people working on top of all that. So, I have a short list here of portal fiction to help you escape from the stress, at least for a little while. If you’re not familiar with portal fiction, in general, it’s about a main character who has the chance to leave a world like ours to hang out in a more fantastical setting – think Chronicles of Narnia.
- Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. This portal series is a big deal right now because of its television show adaptation. These books are pretty hefty bricks, the first in the series clocking in at 850 pages. But they have romance, and adventure all throughout. Claire is from 1945 but goes back in time to 1743 to find Jaime, who may be her true love.
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman. This trilogy is also fairly popular right now because of a television adaptation. Quentin thinks he’s going to live a normal life despite his beyond genius intellect, but finds himself wandering through a portal onto the grounds of Brakebills, a very exclusive school that teaches sorcery. But surprise! This is a portal story within a portal story as Quentin again finds himself outside the bounds of his known reality and inside the mythical land of Fillory – a Narnia-esque world he read about as a child.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. There have been a ton of Oz adaptations over the decades and this is one of the more famous portal stories in American fiction. Dorothy finds herself whisked away to Oz in a tornado and is drafted into helping the land break free of the Wicked Witch of the West. Check out the children’s books, or the more adult fiction adaptation, Wicked by Gregory Maguire
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. This one is my personal favorite but an excellent story despite my own tastes. Nancy has been dropped off at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. She had been missing for several months, according to her parents. According to Nancy, she had just been living in the Halls of Death. She’s not at the school to learn how to cope with the “real” world. But the kids at this school have also been to their own portal worlds, and some of them have brought some scary stuff home with them.
- Coraline by Neil Gaiman. This title was also adapted into a movie. The title character of this portal fantasy is a young girl who has really just had enough of her mom always telling her what to do and how to behave. She stumbles upon a formerly locked door that is now open and… the Other Mother, who seems really cool. At first. This book will make you rethink the way you see buttons.
Classic portal titles: The Gunslinger by Stephen King, A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Post by Carey Gibbons, Reference Specialist
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