Nation by Terry Pratchett
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Book Reviews of Nation
Book Review: While certainly appealing to his legions of existing devotees, NATION should help broaden Pratchett's fan base significantly
Summary: 5 Stars
I was fortunate enough to discover Terry Pratchett's books about young witch-in-training Tiffany Aching a few years back. Since then, I've been recommending these titles --- and the rest of his stellar Discworld novels --- to friends and family, young and old alike. Pratchett is sometimes dismissed as only a humorist, an author of light fantasy that, while offering plenty of comedic social satire, doesn't have much backbone. I would beg to differ with that characterization of the Discworld series, which has as much heart as it does humor.
But, with the publication of NATION, a stand-alone novel that is not part of the Discworld oeuvre, Pratchett should silence those criticisms once and for all. NATION is at once adventurous and contemplative, playful and philosophical, and it should appeal to long-time devotees of the author and new fans alike.
NATION is not set in Discworld but rather in a world that bears a great deal of resemblance to our own in the mid-19th century. There are a few differences in history and geography, but cultural issues such as scientific investigation, the rights of women, and the role and responsibility of the monarchy and religion will certainly be familiar to any student of the Victorian period, even if Pratchett takes some delightful liberties with the historical record.
Ermintrude is the teenage daughter of the Governor of Port Mercia, who had been 139th in line for the throne of England. That is, until a bout of influenza wipes out everyone between him and the throne. The only problem? The presumptive king is thousands of miles away, governing one of the dozens of tiny tropical islands that dot the Southern Pelagic Ocean and contribute to the nation's extensive empire. His daughter is also at sea, on a ship called the Sweet Judy with an unscrupulous crew, eager to join her father. Neither one of them has any idea of the myriad ways in which their fortunes are about to change.
Ermintrude's fortune changes dramatically indeed, when a killer tsunami runs the Sweet Judy aground on a tiny island. Ermintrude is the only survivor of the shipwreck and, as she soon discovers, is one of only two people left alive on the devastated island. The other is Mau, a teenage boy who was in the process of successfully passing his manhood ceremony when the tsunami destroyed his entire Nation. Now Mau is confused about his place in the world. If he has left his boy's soul behind but not yet been given a man's soul, does that make him a human? A demon? Or something else entirely?
Mau and Ermintrude (who quickly takes this opportunity to rename herself Daphne instead of her given name, which she has always hated) don't have too much time to consider these philosophical details. There are hundreds of dead to be buried at sea, shelters to be made, fires to be built, new languages and customs to be learned, and, soon, as dozens of desperate refugees from other islands arrive at the Nation seeking support, other people's problems to which to attend.
Daphne, who has lived her whole life under the thumb of her martinet grandmother, soon discovers she has a passion for doctoring, a talent for making beer, and an appreciation for walking around in the tropical climate in just her petticoat and pantaloons. Mau, who continues to question his soul's worth and his own place in a warlike culture, grows into a capable, confident and kind chief of this new Nation. Together, Daphne and Mau develop a new civilization --- and learn truths about Mau's people's history that may change views of science, culture and religion forever.
NATION may be more philosophically dense and less broadly comic than most of Pratchett's Discworld novels. There's plenty of adventure to be had, though --- with shipwrecks, cannibals, murders and even a hidden sacred burial ground. While certainly appealing to his legions of existing devotees, NATION should help broaden his fan base significantly. It raises some of the most fundamental moral and ethical questions that humans have always struggled with, and then turns them on their head in ways surprising, thought provoking and, finally, eminently satisfying.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
Book Review: When the world was otherwise
Summary: 5 Stars
Returning home from an end-of-boyhood ritual on an isolated island, young Mau encounters a giant wave. When he finally reaches his home, he discovers it's been devastated by the wave. He's the only survivor of his nation, which had existed on this mountainous island for centuries. Although alone, Mau isn't the only survivor of the wave. The surge dumped deep in the forest a ship, which carried safely as it turned out, a very important passenger. In this finest of Pratchett's tales for "young adults", he weaves into the story important concepts along with fine entertainment. The mix works well, in ways only Terry Pratchett can conceive. This book will outlast many other contemporary efforts that fail to incorporate the depths of thinking Pratchett can achieve.
How do you rebuild a "nation" from but one survivor? The wave that destroyed so many communities left a tithe of survivors from other islands. In small groups, they begin to accumulate on Mau's island, forcing him - at thirteen years - to become the new "chief". He has already coped with the job of burying his relatives and other members of his nation. Even that propitiating task doesn't seem to quell the demands of The Grandfathers who visit him in dreams and visions. They express unfulfilled needs which he cannot comprehend. One of the refugees Mau must deal with is a Ataba, a priest who had trained on Mau's island. Ataba knows about the gods - and the white god anchors - which are to be kept nearby and bring good luck to the people of the Nation. This idea eludes Mau who wants to know which god brought the Great Wave and why he should be thankful for it.
Another of the wave's spared tithes is "Daphne", the sole survivor of the shipwreck. She's an Unbaked One from a distant land, daughter of one of the "trousermen". Pale skin and pants were known only by rumour in Mau's Nation prior to the wave. "Daphne", who has listened to Prof Aggasize's lectures and shaken hands with Mr Darwin, is rather a special person. She's in line to ascend the throne - but only after the deaths of 139 people, including of course, her father. In the Nation, "Daphne" finds a new life - she delivers babies, amputates limbs, kills a man . . . not what she'd been "trained" to do by her Gran. Above all, she must learn about Mau, his Nation and The Grandfathers residing somewhere in Mau's mind. A considerable challenge for a girl of but thirteen.
There aren't sufficient words of praise for this book. Pratchett builds his characters with his practiced finesse, keeping the tensions of their interacting lives taut but flexible enough for negotiation. After all, these two children begin their lives together without a word of communication. More seriously, however, Pratchett has those "children" begin thinking in ways that even close adults fail to grasp. "Daphne's" confrontation with her father at the conclusion is rich with implications - even for today. Mau, beset with the responsibility of keeping the refugee community in order, ascends to the role of chief, making him the builder of a new Nation, almost by accident. Can such an endeavour actually succeed? In many ways this is one of the most subversive works of fiction for "young adults" available. It portrays not only a world that is other than the one we live in now, but offers a means to achieve it. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Book Review: Whatever Pratchett's newest book is, it's nearly always one of his best -- he just gets better and better and better
Summary: 5 Stars
Pratchett built his considerable reputation on his first "Discworld" novels, which were subversively funny and had a certain Monty-Python-ish flavor. He's still writing them, of course, and there are about thirty-five of those books now, including a couple of self-contained sub-series. But a strange thing happened in the process: The more recent episodes, while still droll and witty and a great deal of fun in a style Pratchett has made his own, have also become far more serious in what the author has to say to his readers. Pratchett is one of the most humane (and humanist) writers of our time, an immensely kindly soul with a razor tongue when it comes to coercive politics and religion, and he wraps his carefully worked-out opinions in narratives and plotlines that are both simple and straightforward on the surface and quite complex in their depths. This latest parable/novel is being marketed as a YA book -- but, like all the best young adult books, it should be read by thoughtful adults, too. The "nation" of the title is a small island in the South Seas, which to Mau, a boy on the cusp of becoming a man, is the whole world. The time is the 19th century -- but not quite our 19th century. There's a king, for one thing, instead of a queen. Or, at least, there was a king, until a plague hit England and wiped out the 138 people necessary to move a comparative nonentity of a colonial governor up the line to become the next monarch. His daughter, Daphne (as she thinks of herself, because her real name is Ermintrude), is on a ship going to join her father at Port Mercia when an enormous tsunami picks up the ship and tosses it into the jungle on Mau's island. She's the only survivor. Meanwhile, all the people of the Nation were down on the beach, waiting to celebrate Mau's return from the Island of Boys, and all of them are killed by the same wave. Now, Mau *is* the Nation. And his linking up with Daphne is about the only thing that keeps both of them sane. Then other dazed survivors begin to drift in from other drowned islands and Mau suddenly finds himself carrying a great deal of responsibility. But the most important thing to him is getting answers. Why did the gods do this to them? Intoning "the gods are mysterious," he realizes, is just an adult way of shrugging and saying, "Just because." And what will he do when the other Europeans -- the other trousermen -- come to rescue Daphne? After reading (and, for the earlier ones, rereading) each of Pratchett's books over the past few years, I have my own question: Why isn't he on the annual Honours List for a knighthood?Book Review: A Huge Story Told In Small Words
Summary: 5 Stars
We meet Mau on Boy's Island, fulfilling the rituals that will make him a fully fledged man of the Nation, a small community on a island in the "Mothering Sunday" island chain--one speck of land amid other specks in a vast ocean. Just as Mau casts off the canoe he has built himself to return to the Nation, the great tsunami comes, and wipes out his world. When he reaches home, it is no longer there. Although there was high ground that could have sheltered the people had they taken refuge there, they did not know the wave was coming. In fact, the entire Nation had gathered on the low sloping beach to await Mau's return. He will never have his feast or get the tattoos that show he has completed his journey into manhood. His first task is to gather the dead, to give them burial at sea so the wild pigs will not eat the corpses.
With this astounding opening, Terry Pratchett launches his latest Young Adult fantasy. He has never been a writer to talk down to children and all of his books for young people have tackled the truly large questions: who and where is God? Why do bad things happen to good people? What is the meaning of life? Pratchett is a wise man, to catch intelligent readers at this stage. Later on in life questions like "how will I pay the rent?" tend to swallow everything else. If you are a fan of Pratchett's Discworld, you will enjoy this book set on a round world much like our own. Pratchett's trademark humor is playfully in evidence.
But this is a larger story than Pratchett has tackled before and many adults may flinch from it and try to keep it out of the hands of children. In a deceptively simple and transcendent style, Pratchett tells of how Mau is angry at God and his ancestors for not warning the Nation and how he and Daphne, a young British castaway, succor the other refugees that wash up on their beach and so lay the foundations of a new Nation. This is enrapturing, inspirational fantasy--but it cuts to the bone as it asks questions that cannot be answered. This is not escapist fantasy by any means, but while one is reading it one is rapt away to Robinson Crusoe's island.
There is no bad language that a parent could object to. There is no smidgen of sex, although there is romance to wring the hardest heart. There is only necessary opposition to violence. Warning: this book contains large and grand ideas that will start a person thinking. Mau and Daphne confront incredible grief and defy incredible odds in their own world, and they just might change how you look at your own.
Book Review: Finally a Terry Pratchett book that leaves me with a heavy heart (in a good way, I think)
Summary: 5 Stars
How should I start my review after racing through the pages in one night and finally falling asleep profoundly disturbed?
First, I must confess that this review is about first impressions, and I fully intend to re-read the book again for further insights. Having been a fan of Terry Pratchett and his novels, Discworld or otherwise, for some years now, I am at the same time surprised, appalled and in awe when reading this.
After the initial pages, I was surprised at the subdued tone of the writing, a departure from the exuberant and irreverant style unique to his Discworld novels. Granted the subject matter - two youngsters stranded on an island after a catastrophe that wiped out all surrounding peoples, is not to be taken lightly, I was increasingly appalled. The touches of "fantasy" (SPOILER ALERT!) when Mau and Daphne communicated with the ancestral spirits and gods (SPOILER END!) did nothing to hide the brutal, honest realism. Did it shock me? Yes. Did I feel taken in by a cheap writer's trick? Emphatically, no. Nothing in this book is there just for its shock value. Instead, I feel a strong storyteller-reader relationship with Terry Pratchett; crazily or not, I feel like he's telling me this important story in the gentlest, kindest way possible. He has always entertained me with the madcap world that is Discworld, but now he has an important message for me, and he's not gonna shy away from it or dress it up with glibly told jokes. That was when the awe kicked in. As if I did not respect him as an author enough, this sealed the deal.
My first read left me contemplative with a heavy heart, but grateful for all that I have in my unconsequential life. Do not be led to believe from my review that Nation is a depressing book! It's an uplifting book of massive courage and heart as our beloved protagonists, defying their youth and inexperience, forged......well, a Nation......because it gave them a purpose to live instead of give in to despair (and death), and because it was the right thing to do by the refugees who have came to depend on them. Truly the last reviewer was right, there's a lot to think about. And to feel about.