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Elizabeth Knox, Dreamquake
Aug. 12th, 2007 10:32 pmI've had too little time to look at the many fascinating entries and links IBARW has generated (maybe in another fortnight), but this has been sitting on my computer for over a month, and it seemed like an appropriate time to post it.
The second book in what is, for me, an intensely problematic duology. When I read the first book I wondered if I’d missed something, especially when I went hunting for reviews and none of them mentioned what I’d found – a massive, unbelievable hole at the heart of the book. Baffled, I put it aside, and hoped that the sequel – when it came out – would explain everything.
It doesn’t.
So. Both Dreamhunter books are set in an alternate version of New Zealand/Aotearoa, in the early 1900s; a version that is missing its North Island, but keeps all the rest of its geography, with a map on the frontispiece that is quite clearly the top of the South Island, where Nelson (the original capital) becomes Founderston, where the settlers arrived a few generations back, and Farewell Spit is So Long Spit, and Westport hasn’t even been renamed. Each corner of the map has a cameo inset with a different native creature: a tuatara, a kaka, a kiwi, and a fish (my species identification skills are not that good). But only the fish could be named in this book – because the other names are all Maori, the language (and the name) of the first settlers of Aotearoa – later called New Zealand. And, in Knox’s series, there are no Maori.
( Cut for problematic colonial mythology. )
The second book in what is, for me, an intensely problematic duology. When I read the first book I wondered if I’d missed something, especially when I went hunting for reviews and none of them mentioned what I’d found – a massive, unbelievable hole at the heart of the book. Baffled, I put it aside, and hoped that the sequel – when it came out – would explain everything.
It doesn’t.
So. Both Dreamhunter books are set in an alternate version of New Zealand/Aotearoa, in the early 1900s; a version that is missing its North Island, but keeps all the rest of its geography, with a map on the frontispiece that is quite clearly the top of the South Island, where Nelson (the original capital) becomes Founderston, where the settlers arrived a few generations back, and Farewell Spit is So Long Spit, and Westport hasn’t even been renamed. Each corner of the map has a cameo inset with a different native creature: a tuatara, a kaka, a kiwi, and a fish (my species identification skills are not that good). But only the fish could be named in this book – because the other names are all Maori, the language (and the name) of the first settlers of Aotearoa – later called New Zealand. And, in Knox’s series, there are no Maori.
( Cut for problematic colonial mythology. )
