The Door Before (a Prequel to 100 Cupboards)
By N. D. Wilson
Hi! Have you ever wanted to escape a situation? Right now, I want to escape COVID-19 quarantine. I want to see my friends so badly! Well, Hyacinth has wanted to escape a sticky situation as well! Hyacinth’s parents’ job is strange; you might not believe it’s true. But her parents’ job is to hunt down monsters and witches and wizards and that sort of thing.
The Smith family (Hyacinth’s family) has been traveling around the world for years. They’ve never had a true place to call their home. But all of that changes today. Her parents went on one final traveling job and caught a monster who had a body made of fungus and two mouths!
Today, Hyacinth and her family are finally going to settle down and live in a house – a house that they inherited from their great-uncle, who passed away recently. Hyacinth has two sisters and two brothers: Daniel, the oldest, who is sixteen; Harriet, the second oldest, who is fifteen; Circe, the sibling who’s one year older than Hyacinth; and Lawrence, the little brother. However, when they arrive at the house, there is someone already living there! It’s their great-uncle’s sister (their great-aunt), named Granlea Quarles.
Granlea wanted to die at the house and be buried right between her brother and her husband. However, it wasn’t her property and Mr. Smith wanted to make her leave. But Mrs. Smith found compassion in her heart and she told her that she could stay for a little longer until she was ready to leave.
The night that they get to the house, Hyacinth sees her parents and Granlea talking outside. They were talking about the lightening trees outside. However, Granlea spotted Hyacinth and she would not say another word until Hyacinth went back to bed. It turned out that her parents were going to have a conference meeting with the head of their company. They were also going to send Daniel, Harriet and Circe to a training camp. Hyacinth and Lawrence worked to stay at home with Granlea.
Later that day, a man came to inspect the monster’s body. Hyacinth wasn’t supposed to be looking, but her curiosity got the best of her. And she and Lawrence snuck into the hayloft in the barn and listened. However, Hyacinth saw two boys down in the bottom. One of them looked to be hurt pretty badly. She was about to go down and say something to her parents, but something about the boys stopped her. After they inspected the monster, she went into the trees and found Mordecai and Caleb. They lived in a different dimension and had come through a portal. They were being chased by an evil witch-queen because their father had taken away her sight.
While they were trying to run away from her, one of the monsters bit Mordecai and little bits of fungus were growing out of his shoulder. They were trying to get back to their home dimension, because Mordecai’s mother was the only one who could heal it. Hyacinth went back to her house and went to bed. She didn’t want to leave her parents, but she had to.
That night, Hyacinth couldn’t sleep again. She also heard noises from downstairs that woke her up. She tiptoed to the first floor and peeked around the corner. Her aunt was doing something with a doorway. She was talking about her brother, Hyacinth’s great-uncle. Suddenly, it all made sense! The lightening trees could be used as portals, and she was trying to get her husband back because her husband had died going through a portal trying to learn to be a wizard. Instead, though, a magical witch came out. She saw Hyacinth and Lawrence and started going after them after she had pushed their aunt out of the way. They realized that she was the person making the monsters! So, they ran into the woods and hid while she called on her monster army and three wolves.
In the trees, they saw Mordecai and Caleb. Together, they escaped through a tree-portal. They made a plan to go back to Endor to the place where the witch-queen’s father was imprisoned and imprison her in the same way, since she could not die.
Will their plan work and earth be safe from the treachery of the witch-queen? Or will their plan fail, and the witch-queen rule this dimension? As I always say, read the book to find out!
A few helpful things I like to say about the books I read:
“Run and Get Mom” (how I describe the scariness factor – zero being not scary at all and five being majorly scary): 4
“Yucky-Lovey Stuff” (how I describe the romance factor – zero having no yucky-lovey parts in it and five having major yucky-lovey parts): 2
I give this book 5 wands.
I absolutely LOVED this book! It had amazing twists and turns, as Mordecai, Caleb and Hyacinth tried to defeat an evil witch-queen before it was too late!
