I got nine titles into Seanan McGuire's 'Wayward Children' series before I ran out of books to read and review. It's always good to be caught up—which I was for a whole year—but it's always hard to keep up with new volumes too. I was reminded of that as I read this series aloud to my better half, as 'Beneath the Sugar Sky', the third novella, features a primary character called Nadezhda Sokolov, better known as Nadya, who later received her own story in book ten. That's this one and, as I've got book eleven on the shelf, now seems like an excellent time to track it down, read Nadya's tale and then enjoy being caught up again for five minutes.

Nadya is the drowned girl who loves turtles. In fact, she's in the pond at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Girls, playing with turtles, when Sumi's daughter Rini—who she never had—falls out of the sky into the water, prompting the story in the third book. Nadya then plays a huge part in the subsequent quest to get Sumi back to Confection so Rini can be born. In fact, she's the character who gives up the most for the success of the mission, as she volunteers to be the required one left behind in the Halls of the Dead. It does pay off for her in the end, because her door does open in a river to take her back to Belyyreka.

This, however, is her story before that, how she got to Belyyreka to begin with and how it sent her back to our world, to set up what she does in 'Beneath the Sugar Sky'. If there's a surprise, it's that it takes a heck of a long while for her to actually get there, as in a full third of the book. There are thirteen chapters, all told, with the thirteenth really a short coda, and we don't reach Belyyreka until the beginning of chapter five, when a door opens in a turtle pond and she falls into it. Before that, we spend time getting to know her and learning why it feels the need to open for her at all.

As her full name suggests, Nadezhda is Russian, but her single teenage mother doesn't want her, not least because she arrives without a hand on her right arm. So she's brought up in a state-run hospital, where she enforces her character with aplomb. However, it seems that, having already lost one mother, she promptly loses a second when Mother Russia goes along with passing her on to an American couple who bribed their way past the laws prohibiting adoption by foreigners. It's not hard to see their motivation as driven by a white saviour complex, but that's underlined with Nadya's missing hand. Back in the States, they buy her a prosthetic without ever talking about it with her first, just assuming that they're doing a good deed.

Especially through this series, but in other novels too, Seanan McGuire has cemented herself as a  an advocate for the different and I don't know of another writer doing that job even close to how well she's doing it, book after book. That said, the scenes with Nadya being shocked by this choice of gift are among her best, because this young girl has never thought of herself as being disabled. Sure, she can't do everything that her peers can do, though she comes a lot closer than you might expect, but it hurts her to be suddenly considered disabled, like there's something about her that is intrinsically broken and merely bringing that up changes everything. They see her as someone who needs to be fixed and she doesn't understand that.

And, of course, this is why the door. She thought she was Russian but Russia let her go. She never thought of herself as American but she found a home there until this. Now she's on her own and it takes a door appearing in the turtle pond to take her somewhere that accepts her for what she is. That's Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake, the Land of a Million Rivers, and she's accepted not only by its human population but by its turtles. The people here are fishermen, for the most part, and they work in partnership with turtles, their relationship almost symbiotic. These turtles are a sentient race too and they grow to serious size. We learned in 'Beneath the Sugar Sky' that Nadya had a turtle called Burian and we get to see the two of them meet and grow together here.

In fact, we get to see rather a lot of Nadya's life, even though she's sixteen when we first meet her in 'Beneath the Sugar Sky' and she's a long-timer, someone who had been there for five years. She gets to Belyyreka at ten, so it doesn't seem possible that we'll see a lot of her life, but time isn't a consistent thing in this world. It isn't even consistent between the Land Beneath the Lake and the land above the surface. Thus it shouldn't be too surprising to watch her grow, become a scout with Burian the turtle, even get married. She doesn't know how old she is at this point, but she's likely to be nineteen. Yet, when the door sends her back, she's ten again. That's brutal.

Of course, we knew going in that she would get back at eleven, so that last detail isn't surprising. What's surprising is everything that happens in between and I'll let you discover that for yourself. I'll just say that the rivers give and the rivers take away and there are a lot of rivers in this world, all of which start with the letter W: the Winsome, the Whimsy, the Wicked, even the Widdershins. Then again, her whole life has been about giving and taking and it wouldn't be right if it changed at this point. In fact, she doesn't entirely leave the bad stuff behind in our world. The people who take her in in Belyyreka don't care about a missing hand (her prosthetic is eaten by a giant frog almost immediately after she arrives), but she—of all people—gets to experience classism under the lake. That's a wake-up call.

If there's a problem here, it's inherent in what the novella does. The 'Wayward Children' series is an impeccably deep one, but it jumps around a lot. After introducing this universe in 'Every Heart a Doorway', McGuire focused in to tell Jack and Jill's story in 'Down Among the Sticks and Bones', Lundy's story in 'In an Absent Dream' and Regan's story in 'Across the Green Grass Fields', among others. This is one of those and like the first two of those, it's a prequel for a character who we've already met. Thus, it builds them considerably, letting us in on their back stories, but it can't add much to the series lore. I tend to prefer the other books, where we follow multiple characters in a quest that does its own job but also expands what we know about the universe.

So, I'm happy that I got to know more about Nadja, who was a favourite character in 'Beneath the Sugar Sky, but I'm also aware that that's all I'm going to get here. That's fine, of course, but it's an important reminder that books like this one will continue to show up in this series even after the revelations of the previous volume, 'Mislaid in Parts Half-Known', and the serious potential of the girl from the Shop Where the Lost Things Go. I wanted more of Antsy and an increased knowledge of the universe that arrives in her wake, but I got Nadja and suddenly that feels like a distraction. Now, it's a really enjoyable distraction, I'll grant you, but I'm happy I have the next book ready to dive into. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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