I love a good book series, and my two current, ongoing favorites could not be more different.

One is Joe R. Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard books—the violent, profane, and sometimes uproariously funny adventures of two hardass Texas good old boys.

The other, the one I’m here to talk about today, is Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children books. This series, about what happens to the children who are invited to, and choose to, enter portals to other worlds, and then return to our own, began with Every Heart a Doorway. The newest edition, Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, is book 10 in the series, and like all the others, it’s breathtaking in its world building, in the lyrical beauty of its language, in the strength of its characters, and in the satisfying delights of its storytelling. These are slim volumes, and yet somehow McGuire packs so much into each that it’s a small miracle.

Nadya is a ten-year-old orphan from Russia born with one arm. While she’s never really seen that as a handicap—it’s hard to miss what you’ve never had—her adoptive parents in Colorado insist on fitting her with a prosthetic arm. Her new family has given her a life she could never dream about in Russia, but Nadya finds herself feeling alone, misunderstood, unloved. The only place she finds peace, the only place she feels a sense of belonging, is a turtle pond near her home. When something that looks very much like a door opens at the edge of the pond, she accepts the invitation and enters.

Nadya finds herself in Belyrreka, the Land Beneath the Lake, a place where water has different weights, where she—one of the Drowned Girls—can still breath. In this wondrous world of fishing boats that ride on the backs of giant turtles, she finds love and acceptance. She finds family. Belyrreka isn’t a paradise. Life can be hard, and there are dangers aplenty. But Nadya has never been one to shy away from a fight or to take the easy way out, and as she grows into a young woman she finds a rewarding place all her own, a place to call home.

As always, McGuire’s world building is exquisite and all-encompassing. Nadya and her new family are wonderfully realized characters.

McGuire is always good, but her work here is flat out dazzling. I hope she never tires of writing about the Wayward Children.