Taste the Books: Review Morsels #58 Seanan McGuire: Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, Installment Immortality, The Proper Thing and Other Stories

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear,  I'm NOT taking a break from writing long reviews - no such luck LOL (though for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/I don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis). But while I'm making up my mind about a new book I've read, I might as well give you the short version 😉. Just be warned - this feature will be VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire

(Wayward Children #10)

★★★

A disabled Russian orphan, adopted by an American couple who fits her with a prosthetic arm against her will, falls into a water world, finds a new family and bonds with a giant turtle - but playing the hero even if it's not required of her can have dire consequences...

***

Rated 3.5 really.

Seven years (in reader's time) after Nadya's first appearance in Beneath the Sugar Sky, McGuire finally tells us her origin story (and I'm still wondering why Christopher only got a short story for that purpose, but oh well). Despite the tone reminding me of the author's Up-and-Under series under the A. Deborah Baker pen-name, and the portal world somehow echoing the one in Across the Green Grass Fields (both of which left me lukewarm), this installment in the WC series had the potential to be a lot more, thanks to an engaging protagonist, a thought-provoking discourse about disability and bodily autonomy (though Nadya didn't exactly ask for the river to use its magic to "fix" her either, but she doesn't complain when it does), and one very endearing turtle. What didn't work for me (apart for child Nadya breaking character and talking like a semi-adult sometimes) was how the cardinal rules that had informed the WC universe up to this point were set aside. What happened to "being sure" you want to stay, and to the way time is supposed to work when the characters travel to and from the portal worlds? why should Belyyreka work differently? Also, it's very convenient that Nadya would, for all purposes, stumble into a small Russian enclave on the other side of her door...All in all, I enjoyed the story, if with a few quibbles - but the lack of consistency with the rest of the series left me frustrated.

Full review to come.

Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire

(InCryptid #14)

★★★★

On a mission for the anima mundi, ghost babysitter Mary Dunlavy - a staple of the Price-Healy household since Alice was an infant - joins forces with a still grieving Elsie and a slowly unraveling Artie (now Arthur) to save her fellow ghosts from the Covenant, while making up her mind about her future...if she un-lives long enough to have one.

***

Rated 4.5 really.

Again (see previous installment) I may be biased because I love all things ghosts/afterlife, and Mary has quickly become one of my favourite undead characters of all time - but, while the main story per se doesn't exactly live up to the emotional whirlwind that was Book 13, thanks to the ghost perspective (and I don't only mean Mary) I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. The afterlife worldbuilding and the level of detail that goes into the ghosts' powers and interactions is stunning (as everyone who's read the in-universe series Ghost Roads will know), and Mary is a very unique specimen of her sort, with an even more unique perspective - and did I mention that after all these years she still manages to get challenged, change and grow? The author also introduces some new-to-us cryptid varieties (both in the story proper and the companion novella), and provides us with a front-row seat to the aftermath of Elsie's and Arthur's traumas. Bringing two emotionally damaged family members on a dangerous mission may not appear to be the wisest course of action, but as a matter of fact, there's a rhyme and reason to it, and while on one hand it makes for great character development when it comes to Elsie, it gives us very much needed (if heartbreaking) answers about the "new version" of Artie, keeping us on our toes for what will happen next. Though less engaging than the previous book in the series, and relying on the Covenant agents making a rookie mistake at some point (but we'll chalk it up to them being a subpar team, since some of their highest ranks were destroyed), Installment Immortality is a strong addition to a series that doesn't feel like it's going to run out of steam anytime soon. And the companion novella, though also dealing with trauma and a character in a rough place, is a nice homage to the found-family trope.

(Error alert: in Ch. 19, during her inner monologue, Mary calls Elsie...Mary).

Note: as a rule, I review every book that I rate 3.5 stars and above in full, unless it's a novella or an anthology. But this series has been around for years now, and I only started reading it in August 2022, so I decided to only write mini (well...probably more like midi) reviews for its installments, or it would have been too hard for me to catch up. Now that I have, I'm writing mini reviews for the new ones as well, out of consistency.

 The Proper Thing and Other Stories by Seanan McGuire

★★★★★

A compendium of all McGuire's favourite things to write about and then some: viruses/apocalypses, libraries, dead girls, (unforgiving) portal universes, (so-called) monsters, Halloween, carnivals, (murderous) mermaids, winter personifications, (socially challenged/harassed) superheroes...familiar topics given an endless series of new twists. Oh, and cheese too, this time. So much cheese.

***

Seanan McGuire's second mixed-content collection after Laughter at the Academy offers a reprint of some stories she contributed to other anthologies, and a number of her Patreon ones. Given the variety of themes and tones, there were at least a couple that I could have done without (Under the Sea of Stars, because, in the author's own words, it's "structured like a Victorian adventure narrative" - well done, but not my thing; Goodnight, Sleep Tight, because BUGS OVERLOAD 😨). But the rest more than made up for those, and left me in awe. Awe of the million ways McGuire can circle back to familiar themes and tropes and craft a fresh narrative; awe of the way she never fails to make you care for her characters (and oh, her children feel SO REAL); awe of her ability to convey a message without losing sight of the story, or to wrap the first in the second, not the other way around (I wish she had been called to write for the Thirteenth Doctor...). Some of my favourites: Heart of Straw (about retaining the innocence of childhood, and the price you pay); The Levee Was Dry (a smart, heartbreaking metaphor for the tendency to lose the ability to appreciate new music after a certain age. It hit SO CLOSE to home...); Phantoms of the Midway (about growing up, and, well, what the title says - it gave me strong Ghost Roads vibes...); Love in the Last Days of a Doomed World (two women at the end of the world and time paradoxes); What Everyone Knows (the definition of "monster" is subjective, and sometimes, love is unconditional); The Proper Thing (a short novella about what it means to be human, with Wayward Children undertones, a hint of time travel and a whole lot of magic cheese. And yes, all these things go well together 😉). But a lot of these stories also address racism, eugenics, cultural appropriation, social divides, and of course anti-vax madness, and I'm so grateful for that (though I'm afraid these dystopias and apocalypses are a tad too plausible, and McGuire is being a prophet far more than a conscience-awakener...).

Note:  definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later; also, due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series).

So, have you read/are you planning to read any of the above? And if you have, what do you think of them? Do you post mini reviews? Do you like to read them?