It is also, impressively, a remarkable example of some key cultural anthropological principles that explain how societies function and how people function (or don’t function) within a society. However, In Other Lands isn’t just a funny, well-crafted, and self-aware portal fantasy. You might also weep a couple times, perhaps embarrassingly in public. You should read it it is very good and you will laugh aloud many times. This assessment of the book is accurate: it is indeed hilarious and irreverent in its commentary on the tropes of the portal fantasy genre, as well as a good coming-of-age story about characters we instantly care about. The Publishers Weekly starred review for In Other Lands calls it a “hilarious, irreverent, and multilayered coming-of-age fantasy” that tracks several years of Elliot’s experiences living in the school in the Borderlands, but going home to our world over the summer. Elliot, a pacifist, joins the “council” training. The Border guard trains both soldiers and councilors, ostensibly to protect the Borderlands from incursion from our world, but they also spend a lot of time subduing other races. There, he forms strong friendships and fraught alliances with overachieving beautiful peers, and points out some hard truths about the world they inhabit, such as their apparent proclivity for training children to be warriors and their unquestioning assumption that certain non-human races are inherently monstrous. The book follows Elliot, a thirteen-year-old British boy, through a hole in our world that transports him into another one. And it is a finalist for the “Young Adult Book” Locus Award as well! I read the book the moment it came out (and a couple of times since), and I have been feeling pleasantly vindicated as it gets more and more recognition. Sarah Rees Brennan’s 2017 book In Other Lands is a finalist for the World Science Fiction Society’s Award for “Best Young Adult Book,” which will be awarded during the Hugos Awards ceremony at WorldCon.

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan