Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire from the beginning tackles the question many isekai novels, shows, and mangas/manhwas leave us wondering: what happens if/when they go back? Many of the stories in this series end with the characters choosing to stay in their new world, but McGuire tackles the question. What do you do when the world you came from no longer suits you?
The first chapter starts with a teenage girl named Nancy who’d found her way to a world named Halls of the Dead, essentially a Hades and Persephone styled world. While they are never called that, the “Lord of the Dead” and “Lady of the Dead” are pretty obvious. Nancy had been there long enough to have adapted to that world and grown to prefer it. This world is too noisy, too bright, too fast compared to the world she’s grown to call home.
Nancy’s character introduction goes:
She wore black–black jeans, black ankle boots with tiny black buttons marching like soldiers from toe to calf–and she wore white–a loose tank top, the faux pearl bands around her wrists–and she had a ribbon the color of pomegranate seeds tied around the base of her ponytail. Her hair was bone white with runnels of black, like oil spilled onto the marble floor, and her eyes were pale as ice. She squinted in the daylight. From the look of her, it had been quite some time since she had seen the sun. Her small wheeled suitcase was bright pink, covered with cartoon daisies. She had not, in likelihood, purchased it herself (McGuire, 16).
From this description alone, you can begin to guess the world Nancy had been in, and just how much she had changed. These worlds they go to seem to unlock something in the people who go there and they can embrace their true inner self. And we can see just how much her parents are clinging to the preteen girl who left. We see that more in the letter from her mother stating how much they want their “real” daughter back, willing to leave her at the school until she’s ready to come back.
The home is run by one Eleanor West, who like Nancy also found a door to another world. Eleanor has searched for her door for years but never finds it, so now she dedicates her life to helping those like her find their way back or have a community of those who understand.
“How long were you gone? Nancy shook her head. “Forever. Years… I was there for years. I didn’t want to come back.”
“I know, dear.” Eleanor’s hand was gentle on Nancy’s elbow. (McGuire, 22).
The first few chapters show the disconnect that traveling to these worlds causes in people. The longer they stay, the more they adapt to that world, the tendrils of it sinking into them. It dabbles with the question of what is their true world now? Their world of origin, or the one they’ve grown in and long for.