Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear
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4.7 • 18 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
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 Belyyreka, 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 Belyyreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For the sensitive and eerie 10th standalone portal fantasy in the Hugo Award–winning Wayward Children series (after Mislaid in Parts Half-Known), bestseller McGuire expands the backstory of Russian orphan Nadya Sokolov. Nadya was born with a stump for a right arm and raised by the state until she was adopted by American missionaries and taken to Denver. Though she's quite capable with only one hand, her adoptive parents still insist on buying her a prosthetic arm to make her "whole," which only increases her feelings of alienation. When she falls through a watery doorway into Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake, an aquatic world whose people live in partnership with giant turtles, Nadya is happy to find a new home, family, and sense of belonging. But Belyyreka has many dangers, and she'll have to fight to maintain her life there. The setting is evocative and mysterious, and McGuire makes Nadya's attempts to find her place in the world stirring while touching upon disability rights issues and quietly condemning parents who see children (adoptive or otherwise) as status symbols rather than people. Newcomers are sure to be sucked in, and though longtime readers of the series already know how Nadya's story ends, they'll enjoy seeing where it began. This is another gem from McGuire.
Customer Reviews
Nadya’s Origin Story…
“Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear” is the newly released tenth novella in Seanan McQuire’s Wayward Children Series. These have clearly become the ultimate portal fantasy series for modern readers. In these novellas, certain children and or young adults find impossible doorways to places they need, or that need them. Sometimes they return to our world, sometimes they go back.
The novella starts with a the birth of a girl named Nadya in Russia. Her mother is little more than a girl herself, and abandons her to an orphanage. She is born lacking the lower part of an arm, but this never bothered her, it was just part of who she was. One day visitors from America came, and they adopted her and took her off to a foreign land called Colorado. These adoptive parents meant well, but they didn’t adopt her for the right reasons. Her life is better, but her one real joy is visiting the turtles in a pond near her home. Nadya has always loved turtles and tortoises.
One day she observes a turtle with the words “Be Sure” on its back, in her attempt to follow this turtle, she falls into a watery doorway and finds herself elsewhere. She later learns that this new place is Belyyreka, “The Land Beneath the Lake” and that she has become a “Drowned Girl.” There are many forms of water in Belyyreka, and some of it can be breathed like air. But more importantly, she discovers that there are giant water turtles here that have partnered with the people of the river. She is adopted into their society, and grows to young adulthood.
This is Nadya’s origin story, and readers should remember that she was the Drowned Girl we met before in “Beneath the Sugar Sky.” These stories are modern and inclusive fairy tales, with which readers from the 21st century can relate. I’m now looking forward to the next installment in the series, which does not appear to have been concluded as of yet.