Finding himself alone on a desert island when everything and everyone he knows and loved has been washed away in a huge storm, Mau is the last surviving member of his nation. He's also completely alone - or so he thinks until he finds the ghost girl. She has no toes, wears strange lacy trousers like the grandfather bird and gives him a stick which can make fire.
Daphne, sole survivor of the wreck of the Sweet Judy, almost immediately regrets trying to shoot the native boy. Thank goodness the powder was wet and the gun only produced a spark. She's certain her father, distant cousin of the Royal family, will come and rescue her but it seems, for now, all she has for company is the boy and the foul-mouthed ship's parrot.
As it happens, they are not alone for long. Other survivors start to arrive to take refuge on the island they all call the Nation and then raiders accompanied by murderous mutineers from the Sweet Judy. Together, Mau and Daphne discover some remarkable things - including how to milk a pig and why spitting in beer is a good thing - and start to forge a new Nation.
As can be expected from Terry Pratchett, the master story-teller, this new children's novel is both witty and wise, encompassing themes of death and nationhood, while being extremely funny. Mau's ancestors have something to teach us all. Mau just wishes they would shut up about it and let him get on with saving everyone's lives!
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 11, 2008 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781407046365
- File size: 275429 KB
- Duration: 09:33:48
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Lexile® Measure: 790
- Text Difficulty: 3-4
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Reviews
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After a giant wave has hit his home island, Mau returns from the rituals for transitioning from a boy to a man to find that everyone has been washed away. Along comes Daphne, who was washed ashore after the ship on which she was traveling was caught in the same wave. Narrator Stephen Briggs deftly acts as guide as the building of a new nation begins in a time like the nineteenth century in a place like those on the edges of the British Empire. Briggs adopts a tone of fun without resorting to outrageous hilarity and thus preserves the satire, and the overall sweetness, of the story. He preserves the proper British manners of Daphne's father, who has now become king and whose position allows him to finally put his mother in her place. J.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from August 11, 2008
In Carnegie Medalist Pratchett’s (the Discworld novels; A Hat Full of Sky
) superb mix of alternate history and fantasy, the king of England, along with the next 137 people in line to the throne, has just succumbed to the plague; the era might be akin to the 1860s or ’70s. As the heir apparent is being fetched from his new post as governor of an island chain in the South Pelagic Ocean, his daughter, the redoubtable Ermintrude, still en route to join him in the South Pelagic, has been shipwrecked by a tsunami. She meets Mau, whose entire people have been wiped out by the great wave (he escaped their fate only because he was undergoing an initiation rite on another island). She and Mau each suffer profound crises of faith, and together they re-establish Mau’s nation from other survivors who gradually wash up on shore and rediscover (with guidance from spirits) its remarkable lost heritage. Neatly balancing the somber and the wildly humorous in a riveting tale of discovery, Pratchett shows himself at the height of his powers. Ages 12–up.
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