Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

Published 2025 by Tor Publishing.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-84833-8

(1 review)

Giant turtles, impossible ships, and tidal rivers ridden by a Drowned girl in search of a family in the latest in the bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire.

Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.

Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.

It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong.

It wasn't her.

Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyrreka, the Land Beneath the Lake--and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyrreka, …

Giant turtles, impossible ships, and tidal rivers ridden by a Drowned girl in search of a family in the latest in the bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire.

Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.

Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.

It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong.

It wasn't her.

Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyrreka, the Land Beneath the Lake--and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyrreka, she found herself understood for who she was: a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people.

But even in Belyrreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.

3 editions

enne📚 reviewed Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

2 stars

Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series is always a bit hit or miss for me. Usually the non-ensemble books are more to my taste, but this one just didn't hang together for me.

(Sorry for mostly negative review, I'll try to keep this brief.)

This one is backstory for Nadya (who we've met in earlier books) and we get to see her water world of Belryyka that she falls into. I love the wild worldbuilding in all of the portal worlds of this series and this one didn't disappoint. However, plot-wise, (and it's possible that I am misremembering), it felt like the book set out some rules about how this world and doors worked and then violated them.

Sadly, the writing here leans heavy-handed and didactic to me. Yes, we get it, we know that Nadya does not have a right hand, but this book takes such pains to elaborate how …

Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series is always a bit hit or miss for me. Usually the non-ensemble books are more to my taste, but this one just didn't hang together for me.

(Sorry for mostly negative review, I'll try to keep this brief.)

This one is backstory for Nadya (who we've met in earlier books) and we get to see her water world of Belryyka that she falls into. I love the wild worldbuilding in all of the portal worlds of this series and this one didn't disappoint. However, plot-wise, (and it's possible that I am misremembering), it felt like the book set out some rules about how this world and doors worked and then violated them.

Sadly, the writing here leans heavy-handed and didactic to me. Yes, we get it, we know that Nadya does not have a right hand, but this book takes such pains to elaborate how much that's ok, but also it's ok when she can choose to use a prosthetic, that it deeply overshadows any other character traits that Nadya has. (Insert some spoilery quibbles around the nature of choices here.) Additionally, sometimes the narrator sounds like the child she is, and other times she sounds like an adult with years of therapy who understands self-kindness and social models of disability. The combination is that it's hard to understand who Nadya is.

Mostly, it just doesn't feel thematically as tight as something like Lost in the Moment and Found where the protagonist, ideas, and plot all resonate together. Because Nadya doesn't really have much characterization past "helpful" and "curious", the narrative arc feels abrupt and unjustified.