TITLE: Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear
AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire
146 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250848338 (hardcover; also e-book and audio)
MY RATING: 4 stars out of 5
Since this is the tenth book in the Wayward Children novella series, perhaps a quick recap of what the series is about is in order. Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is for children who (like Dorothy, Alice, and the Pevensie clan) have journeyed through a Door to another world and returned to a home they no longer fit into. Disbelieving parents send these “troubled” kids off to boarding school – and if the kids are lucky, that school is Eleanor West’s, where they will find refuge, respite, and adults who understand them while they await the day their Door will find them once again. The odd numbered books in the series take place in the characters’ present day and usually involve a core group of students going on a quest to save a classmate (even though Eleanor has a “No Quests” rule they find ways to work around). The even numbered books, like this one, focus on one student’s backstory – their portal adventure.
As such, Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is a great jumping on point for readers new to the series who may not realize it’s part of a series. We have one focal character – Nadya, who in the odd numbered present-day sequence last appeared in book 3, Beneath the Sugar Sky – and one new world to explore, Belyyreka also known as the Land Beneath the Lake.
We got little of Nadya’s backstory when she appeared in Sugar Sky. Basically we were told that she had spent a “lifetime” in Belyyreka and then fell in a river and found herself back on Earth. So this volume gives us her complete story. Again, I won’t spoil the plot of the current book, but McGuire has a lot to say about both living with a physical difference you don’t consider a disability but others do (Nadya is born in Russia missing one arm, but doesn’t consider herself to be at a disadvantage because of it – but she also recognizes that the kids who are not missing limbs are the ones who are more likely to get adopted and she does what she can to help them make the good impressions they need to make) and how not every adoption experience is the beautiful, loved filled, all-for-the-right-reasons 1980s television movies of the week (and Lifetime or Great American Family Channel movies in the current day) would have us believe (Nadya does eventually get adopted, but for what is obviously all the wrong reasons). Going through the Door that manifests in a turtle pond brings Nadya eventually to a different sort of adoption experience, and we as readers get to see the effect going from a situation in which a child is not understood into one in which the child is accepted as is can have on a child’s mental health and self-image.
Belyyreka is another fascinating McGuire creation, a world where everyone breathes water (including, automatically, anyone who stumbles through a magic Door from an air-breathing world). McGuire’s worldbuilding is always rich and detailed and Belyyreka is no exception. I’m sure there are folkloric antecedents McGuire built this world off of, but I am unfamiliar with them and haven’t had a chance to research before posting this review. The society Nadya finds herself a part of involves humans who fish and farm with the aid of giant turtles. Yes, you read that correctly: giant turtles. Prior to this book, my favorite giant turtle was Gamera. I think now (without spoilers of any kind) it's Burian.
To be clear: reading Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is a complete experience – one could read this and not read any of the other books in the Wayward Children series, and not feel cheated (just as one can read the first Oz or Wonderland or Narnia books and feel like a complete story has been told). But I hope that readers coming to the series through this book will want to seek out Beneath the Sugar Sky to see where Nadya’s story goes next, and then be intrigued enough to read the rest of the series. It definitely made me want to re-read Sugar Sky.
I received an electronic advance reading copy of this book for free via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.