Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

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.

I still enjoy that these worlds are so individual that they show the inner workings of the character. I have no interest in being in any of them. And that's the point, the worlds are not for me. But I still enjoy reading about them.