"Welcome to the Hooflands. We're happy to have you, even if you being here means something's coming."
Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.
When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to "Be Sure" before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines―a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.
But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem...
The sixth installment of the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire.
Tropes in Across the Green Grass Fields include:
- A-Cup Angst: Regan feels left behind by her peers because they're all going through puberty and she's not, and they're starting to treat her like a baby because she doesn't need a bra or have her period yet.
- All Girls Like Ponies: Regan loves horses, which is one of the reasons she ends up going to the Hooflands. Also invoked, Regan knows that her interest is safe from mockery by her junior Alpha Bitch "friend" because horses are seen as a typical interest for girls.
- Anticlimax: Regan gives a speech about autonomy to four people, and then her quest is done and the next door she walks through drops her back on Earth. No word on her reunion with her parents, or how her herd "family" coped with losing her, or whether the Hooflands managed to transition to a more egalitarian government. And she only re-enters the Door by accident. Notably, the entire finale only takes up a fifth of the book.
- Arcadia: Compared to some other Doors, the Hooflands are idyllic. Any danger comes more from the political divisions present than from nature or magical rules. Granted, those politics include things like "is it socially acceptable to eat fellow sapients", but it's generally still a good place to grow up.
- Artistic License – Biology: While intersex individuals vary a great deal, the symptoms Regan displays seem more in line with Swyer Syndrome than with androgen insensitivity. XY women with androgen insensitivity generally do develop breasts at puberty.
- Beta Bitch: Regan is a young version—she's so scared of Laurel that she does everything in her power to keep Laurel happy so that she can remain at Laurel's side, and thus be safe from her.
- Dark Lord on Life Support: "Queen Kagami" is actually an old human man with a fatal lung disease, who took an opportunity someone else offered him to exploit the Hooflands' natives while he waited to get back to Earth. Even his soldiers drop any pretense to loyalty the minute they see Regan.
- Dark Secret: There has never been a human hero in the Hooflands. The previous "heroes" simply seized control of the throne and have been passing it on in secret for a long time, and every other human has either died, been killed, or was Driven to Suicide.
- Death Seeker: The old man posing as Queen Kagami asks Regan to put him out of his misery. Regan can't bear to do it herself, but sends Gristle up to do it for her.
- Fantastic Livestock: Unicorns are the most common livestock animal in the Hooflands. When Regan first arrives, she's a bit thrown to learn that the ethereally beautiful creatures are dumb as posts and kept for food.
- Fantastic Racism: It's revealed that centaurs, fauns, and other "civilized" folk of the Hooflands don't acknowledge the personhood of kelpies or perytons. With kelpies it's a bit more understandable as they have a tendency to eat people, but peryton are only scavengers.
- When she's kidnapped by the faun, the silene, and the minotaur she discovers that they look down on centaurs—possibly because they're bipedal and centaurs aren't, but it isn't made clear.
- And of course the previous "hero" doesn't view any of the residents of the Hooflands as people but only as talking beasts at best
- Female Misogynist: Laurel is a young version, shunning and bullying any girls who aren't the "right" type of girl.
- Figure It Out Yourself: When Queen Kagami is defeated, the rest of her soldiers ask Regan what to do since she refuses the throne. Regan bluntly says she hasn't the slightest idea how government works, and they're gonna have to deal with it themselves.
- Former Friend of Alpha Bitch: The unintentional version where it wasn't her choice. Regan confided in Laurel hoping for support from her childhood friend after learning such an identity-shaking thing. Instead Laurel rejects her. Processing the incident is a major part of Regan's character arc.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Queen Kagami, her Sunlit Majesty, who offers a significant bounty to anyone who captures Regan, dead or alive. She also sets ridiculous prices for trade goods that drive her people into poverty.
- Good Parents: Regan's parents do their best to keep her from copying Laurel and reassure her that there's no wrong way to be a girl. Sadly, Regan is too young and too afraid to really internalize any of it.
- Notably they make clear that had any doctors have suggested surgery to "correct" Regan having atypical genitalia, they would have refused, because she's perfect in their eyes.
- Hellish Horse: The kelpies enjoy eating human flesh.
- Homage: Described by the author as a love letter to the very first My Little Pony cartoon. Regan, like Megan, is a human who goes to a world of horses and horse-related magical creatures (the Hooflands, rather than the Ponylands), and must go on dangerous and heroic quests there.
- Holding Out for a Hero: The equines of the Hooflands put all their need for heroism on the humans that arrive there, claiming that humans are simply better for the job. This is why Queen Kagami is allowed to reign: although they could rise up against her, they are waiting for the right human to do it instead. It turns out that "Queen Kagami", and likely many human heroes before him, have been using this to exploit them. Regan eventually snaps at them about how for all their claim that Humans Are Special, they could have solved their own problems long ago and it's unrealistic to put the fate on their land on a child.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Regan is utterly, utterly terrified of being "weird" because she knows that Kids Are Cruel (see below). This does not make learning she's intersex any easier on her, and it's what draws her to the Hooflands in the first place: as the only human girl with no one to compare to, the horses all accept her as normal by default.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Gristle the kelpie. Zigzagged with Zephyr the peryton, who wouldn't eat someone still alive.
- Insidious Rumor Mill: Regan knows this is what she faces after Laurel's horrible reaction to learning she's intersex. She was already a witness to this when Heather got on Laurel's bad side. Likely another factor that let her see her door.
- Intersex Tribulations: Regan's "best friend" is not only willfully ignorant of Regan's explanation of her intersex identity, she bullies and misgenders Regan when Regan comes out to her.
- Ironic Hell: "Queen Kagami" despises the Hooflands and murdered his caretaker to seize control while waiting for his door so he could go home. It never reappeared, and it's implied the same has been true for every Fallen Hero of the Hooflands, letting them age and die in a place they hate.
- Kids Are Cruel: The book kicks off with Regan's friend Laurel ostracizing their other friend Heather for thinking a garter snake is cute, because snakes aren't girly enough for Laurel. Regan is miserable but too terrified of Laurel to argue with her. Skip ahead a few years, and Laurel reacts extremely nastily to Regan's explanation that she's intersex, misgendering her and accusing her of lying.
- Kirin: In the Hooflands, kirin are sapient unicorns, unlike the unicorns that Regan's centaur friends herd (those unicorns are more like deer with sharp horns, and they are very, very unintelligent).
- The Man Behind the Curtain: The human hero who crowned Kagami queen of the Hooflands assumed the throne in her place and waited for his door to reappear. It's implied all previous human heroes did the same.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Regan saves the Hooflands, and is promptly tricked into going back to Earth, losing her family and home.
- Our Centaurs Are Different: The centaurs that Regan meets herd unicorns and have a strange system of husbandry that Regan doesn't fully understand.
- Our Perytons Are Different: They're carnivorous, skinless deer with antlers and wings like giant barn owls that are as monstrous as kelpies.
- Translator Microbes: All species have a small degree of latent magic that they use to understand each other, but this magic only manifests if they consider whoever they're talking to "a person". The centaurs, socialized since birth to fear kelpies and perytons, cannot understand their speech- or even that it is speech. Regan doesn't have this expectation, so she can hear those species as they truly are.
- Unicorns Are Sacred: Averted hard; the centaurs in the Hooflands who herd unicorns use the unicorns for their hides and meat.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The ruler of the Hooflands is a man who believes he's entitled to it because the people there are "merely" beasts. The actual Kagami was a kirin who found and sheltered him, and he slit her throat without a second thought to assume her identity.
- White Man's Burden: The creatures of the Hooflands say that humans are simply better at being heroes than the rest of them, hence why it's their job to save everyone. Deconstructed. It's all propaganda spread by previous human "heroes" to keep their power under human control.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: In a manner of speaking. The man who's pretending to be Queen Kagami asks Regan to kill him and assume his place as the rightful ruler over the Hooflands. He reveals that he did this to the woman before him, and she before him. Regan refuses, choosing instead to expose the ruse.
