Flaxroots Productions

Striking book

19/11/2018

The Green Fairy
by Alejandro Davila
Illustrations by Vittorio Suhendro

Let me start by saying this book is certainly well worth the wait!
The presentation is immaculate and the binding exquisite. The binding is the second thing that caught my eye. This book opens flat, which is a plus as it is a substantial work.
The art work is stunning and professional. It’s a delight to see and the colours create the perfect mood for our little green fairy.
This is truly a book to retain.
Good versus evil. Kindness versus greed.
This little green fairy finds herself displaced and at the mercy of The Fairy Catchers who have come up to the mountains specifically to hunt fairies with their nets.
With all she possessed, the Green Fairy flew off into the night.
When she settled into a tall tree, she discovered shops, and stalls selling flowers and cherries, set up inside on the branches. This was the Fairy Markets.
From there, she headed off to the city. Her intention was to find an empty street lamp in which to set up her home. But she was the wrong colour. She was green. The yellow fairies around her stood together and demanded the green fairy leave.
So off she goes again, into the night, bewildered and afraid.
Will the little green fairy ever find her place in the world?
I hope so.
Now if you skip through this glorious book and find yourself truly caught up in the tale, you will barely notice the lack of proofreading, wrong punctuation and typos littered throughout. And I did notice a couple of words that seemed a little age inappropriate.
But what a striking book!

Review by Susan Tarr

Title: The Green Fairy
Author: Alejandro Davila; Illustrator: Vittorio Suhendro
Publisher: Duckling Publishing
ISBN: 9780473437497
RRP: $24.95
Available: bookshops

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Attention to history in novel

14/11/2018

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The Landwaster (Chronicles of The Scraeling Vol 1)
by MJ Burr

There is something to be said for historical fiction as a genre. I avoided it for many years until finally being introduced to it properly. History is a passion, as is reading, and the two coming together to form a well-researched story is something I lose myself in.
The Landwaster does just that.
The story has the depth that only passion can bring and, from cover to cover, it is clear that Burr has a dedication to history that many authors don’t quite understand. History is messy. It is a long road, rough and bloody, and The Landwaster is no different.
First, we are introduced to the main characters as they assault the convent of Les Trois Etoiles. Assault is the only way it can be described. A bloody, savage assault on the senses, which has a visceral effect on the reader. There is no clean, light Knights of the Round Table view of history here. Burr has kept away from making the mistake many historical fiction writers make by adding a clean sheen to history, and I commend him for this. Rape, murder, blood, the Vikings did it all, and so too do the characters in The Landwaster as they satisfy every urge in the first chapter.
As the book continues, the attention to history is constant, as the characters travel from Norway, to Constantinople, to Sicily, to London, each new location dragging me further into the complex world of Harald Hardraada.
However, as much as I enjoyed being there, I felt that the format of the book did little to keep the reader enthralled for too long. I don’t know if it was decision made by Burr to allow the reader a reprieve from the heavy world but having The Chronicles after every passage really tore me from the immersion. I am fully aware that this, and subsequent instalments are The Scraeling, telling us what happened from his own viewpoint, a function I actually really enjoy, but the simple act of labelling The Chronicle so frequently began to get repetitive, and as result, kept me from truly losing myself in the story, as I knew there was a break coming up. Even omitting The Chronicle would do much to keep the immersion, as it would have a more natural flow.The Italics work perfectly well on their own, so the labels seem somewhat superfluous and break up the rich tapestry of the 11th century.
And it is rich. Burr’s use of description throughout does, at times, seem to be a bit heavy handed but for the most part, he paints a very clear picture of the tyrant’s conquest.
This book does not paint a pretty picture of the 30 years in which Harald Hardraada, who acted with nothing but avarice during his conquest in the 11th century, but will leave the reader in awe of his accomplishments, as well as admiration of The Scraeling’s cunning as The Landwaster carves a bloody path to satisfy his own desires at the cost of any who made the misfortune of getting in his way.

Review by Cameron Lines

Title: The Landwaster (Chronicles of The Scraeling Vol 1)
Author: MJ Burr
Publisher: Cliowrite Ltd; 36 Wairau Road; Oakura; Taranaki 4314
ISBN: 978-0-473-41124-4
RRP: US$4.34 Amazon Kindle; $31.29 The Book Depository paperback
Available: paper as above or $25 from author, info@cliowrite.com

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Social history of sport

9/11/2018

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Sport and the New Zealanders: A History
by Greg Ryan & Geoff Watson

This book, which traces the history of sport in New Zealand, will be of interest to any sports enthusiasts in New Zealand who want a long read. It covers most of the recorded history of the country, including an initial chapter for the pre-1840 era.
It is written by two academics, rather than sports journalists or fans, and shows that sport has been a topic of significant scholarship within the universities. There are 40 pages of endnotes at the back.
The book is certainly well-written. However, the authors do place their story within an academic context, and the historiography of the wider society, which results in an emphasis on the early years. It is very much a social history of sport, followed by an assessment of the effects of the commercialism of sport, and societal change on the mass participation in sport. So anyone expecting a lot of detail on recent professional sportspeople will actually find the balance tipped back towards the amateur era.
It has to be said that much of the focus of the authors is upon the development of rugby union, even though many sports are woven into the narrative. This can be justified on the idea that rugby is the ‘national game’, and has the broadest range of participants in terms of town and country. It certainly has the most popular depth, and therefore commercial appeal. And it has developed over time, as we witness the increased participation of urban Pasifika players, and the rise of the women’s game. But inevitably the sporting links with South Africa have to be covered, and the 1981 Springbok Tour examined, especially as other sports had a temporary moment in the limelight. Questions remain over whether one dominant sport is helpful to the others.
While the text moves into the emphasis on commercialised sport and the elite level, there is another perspective provided by the photographic plates. All of these are presented well in black and white, and the most recent is from the 1980s (apart from two cartoons). The research for these photos in the archives has provided an emphasis on the participation of ordinary folk, with a few elite national representatives from yesteryear. The only downside is that the participants are mostly unknown, and the places are sometimes vague as well. The photo for the cover is also a curious choice: an unknown weightlifter at the Petone Recreation Ground, circa 1956. There seems to be no weightlifter mentioned in the text, even for the 1974 Commonwealth Games.
Some of us may want to see the Christchurch Commonwealth Games as something of a high point, before the political controversies of the later 1970s, and the rampant commercialism of more recent times. The authors contemplate the issues of social change for its effect on sport in the chapter “And Sport for All?”, and in a brief conclusion. Certainly, there is more diversity in sport, with stereotypes of sexuality being challenged and overcome; and there has been more focus on disabled and Paralympian participation, with some particular individuals becoming prominent.
However, the ‘prominence’ of individuals reflects the commercial branding that they can achieve, even within a team culture. The overriding commercial imperative in modern professional sport is acknowledged by the authors, but they emphasise the continuity in the sporting culture in New Zealand. Perhaps there is still a strong element of an amateur culture, but it now appears that money actually rules the game.

Review by S A Boyce

Title: Sport and the New Zealanders: A History
Author: Greg Ryan & Geoff Watson
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408831
RRP: $65.00
Available: bookshops

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Book’s ideas recommended

5/11/2018

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The Infinite Game
by Niki Harré

All life is a game. Or is it? If so, what type of game? How do you play and win? Or is winning not important?
These are some of the questions that must have rattled around Niki Harré’s mind before she conceived the ideas behind writing ‘The Infinite Game’. And she answers these questions quite early on in the book.
  The first part of the book is a dry read and it will take a persistent reader to get through it without bouts of nodding off. But she makes her point: competition sucks. What Harré calls ‘finite’ games have an end-point, winners and losers, less of the first, many many more of the second, which, looked at in that way, is a mug’s game. But we all get trapped in these games, so much so, we forget there might be another way. The alternative is to live in a world we create where winning is more about the process of life than the end result. Where people come and go without competition. Where we live together well, the infinite game. That is Harré’s message.
  The second part of the book is far more personal and the dry style is dropped. And it is far shorter. But how many readers will make it to the second part (which, by the way, is only the last quarter or so of the book)?
  Personally, I liked the chapter about the Trickster best of all – how we get seduced into playing by the rules of one or more finite games even when we think we’re in total sympathy with switching to an infinite game. Sigh.
This is a semi-academic book with a nod to the ordinary reader interested in a better way of life (and of bringing up our children). Perhaps bits of the second part could have been inserted into the first to lighten up the load. The message Harré conveys is a message worthy of dissemination.
I heartily recommend the book’s ideas and the second part conveys Harré’s humility in bringing these ideas forth. If interested, do persist. And if we all carry out her recommendations, maybe, just maybe, we’ll create a more friendly world devoid of much unnecessary stress.

Review by Kiw1

Title: The Infinite Game: How to live well together
Author: Niki Harré
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408787
RRP: $29.99
Available: bookshops

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WW1 memoir an eloquent protest

30/10/2018

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Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand Infantryman
by Alexander Aitken

Not unnaturally, the centenary of World War 1 has been marked by a plethora of war memoirs, campaign histories, battle analyses and overall surveys. This work stands head and shoulders above most of them, precisely because it contains no overtly blazing message, whether condemnation of the ritualised insanity of war or of the self-evident truth that war is hell.
   This is not a record of ‘one man’s war’; the persona of the author is missing from most of it because Alexander Aitken chronicles his memories in a way that allows his readers to draw the self-evident truths for themselves. Totally disinterested in being ‘the voice of a generation’, his memoir is silent on such typical starting-points as his motives for enlisting, his initial impressions of the military life and his basic training, and bypasses these to emerge as the most eloquent, take-it-or-leave-it protest possible against what this educated, sensitive, Christian and thoroughly decent man was obliged to do and to endure in doing his duty, as he saw it, to the defence of civilisation.
     Only a man of Aitken’s intellectual gifts could have written this book in this way and with this effect, and if one is to understand the book fully, one must first understand the author. He was a strikingly intelligent man who was clearly the product of an education much above the average even allowing for the light-years’ difference between what was considered essential for an early 20th century education and that of the 21st. It is pertinent to note that Aitken’s brilliant academic career would have been stillborn in his family’s need for his labour but for a scholarship to Otago Boys’ High School, from which he emerged with a first place in the National University Scholarship Examination in Latin, third place in English and French but, more importantly for a future that would see him Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University, the realisation that numbers and the patterns into which they may be organised could be used to train the memory into feats ever more prodigal. These are recounted throughout the book and read like a chapter of Ripley’s ‘Believe it or Not’, but the excellence of Aitken’s memory is self-evident and the quality of his analysis superb.
     His bona fides as an intelligent analyst and observer established, then, we may turn to his commentaries on the War in France with the recollection that they are the product of a first-class intellect and no small gifts of expression, and look at some of them in summary:
On War: “Since modern war consists so largely in the grossest deceptions ensuring the foulest opportunities.”; “And so let (modern war) be stripped of glamour and seen for what it is.”
On Truth: “Naturally there could be no mention of such a set-back in our own communiqués, aiming as they did not at truth but at gloss.”
On Normality: “This area was out of the intenser zone of shell-fire, though
occasional long-range high-explosive, gas- and tear-shells fell about at random.”;   “I shook off our conditioned callousness, shook off the feeling, now taking root, that this world of arbitrary violence and random death was the real world, and that justice, mercy, peace and love were phantasms that had never been.”
On Euphemism: “It was about this time that the word ‘attrition’ acquired a vogue,
though only in 1917 did it have a general use and an accompanying theory. There can be little doubt that both the word and the theory were the by-product, the cover, and an attempt towards the palliation of the enormous losses sustained in these great ‘pushes’ which for the gain of ten miles of advance might mean the loss of 200,000 men.”
    And perhaps the most searing of all, On Behaviour: “To describe (bayonet drill) accurately is to indict civilisation.”
Aitken’s memoir of Gallipoli is that of a scholarly man steeped in the classics
and therefore revelling in the discovery of places about which he had only read; gradually we see his pleasure in the classical ambience eroded under the corrosive effect of war as in the fact that the surviving veterans of the Main Body and Gallipoli landings chose, in rest on Lemnos, to remain in their tents “suffering, one might say, from an induced agoraphobia” because they had been conditioned by their Gallipoli experiences into the conviction that being outdoors was likely to become a fatal experience.
     Disillusionment is also seen in Aitken’s view of poetry-as-propaganda when he contrasts the sentiment of ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ with the reality that the dead of Gallipoli were swiftly stripped of their boots by Turks even less well-equipped than the ANZACs, and when he writes “Active service permanently removes any taste for the conventional poetry of war (to become) merely a cause of wonder that a grown man could write it.”
     Here, then, is the clinical eye of the classicist and the mathematician doing what he must because of what he believes to be his duty to the milieu that produced him. It remains to be considered what that milieu may have thought of him.
     Aitken was obviously precocious. Nicknamed ‘Swotty’ from his earliest days at Otago Boys’, as a private he boned up on the features of the Gallipoli landscape before he got there. As an NCO he memorised the platoon muster-book’s record of names, numbers, next-of-kin and their addresses. As an officer he conducted lessons in celestial navigation for his soldiery. The boy who claimed to have “worked much less” than any of his contemporaries at Otago Boys’ grew into a soldier who wrote things down, committed things to memory, and studied maps, plans and orders to a degree of perfection of which only he was capable, because he would not be caught unprepared while in charge of others.
This is the answer to his editor’s question of “ . . . how someone so intellectually gifted could spend so much of his war, not as an officer . . . but as a regular NCO, rubbing along with the labourers and farm workers and tradesmen of the Regiment.”  In a word, they trusted him and that trust was evinced in the way his men colluded in Aitken’s possession and maintenance of the cherished violin that accompanied him on so much of his travels and travails.
     Aitken’s story is greatly assisted by editor Professor Alex Calder of the University of Auckland who has added to Aitken’s outstanding and precise prose a timeline, a valuable notes section, a bibliography and a commemorative index of names.

Review by MJ Burr

Title: Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand Infantryman
Author: Alexander Aitken; with introduction & editing by Alex Calder
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408817
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops

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A real boys’ book

24/10/2018

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My Old Man He Played Rugby
by Peter Millett
Illustrations by Jenny Cooper; sung by Jay Laga’aia (and that is a huge bonus!)

It’s just what I have been waiting for: a real boys’ book!
     I can just imagine a dad and his son/sons crowding him out on the sofa or veranda step as they read, listen and sing along to this book together.
     It’s the first audio book combo I have experienced, and if others are like this it certainly won’t be the last!
     The rhythm is catchy, the pictures inviting and gripping, the words conjuring up days in the dust and hot sun, the mud and miserable rain, on a typical Saturday.
     Happy spectator participation, and even though there are the inevitable highs and lows there is no sign of aggression or fist-waving. The two teams play, the yellows and the blacks, as we always hope they will, in the spirit of the game. And their expressions are delightful!
     Just page after page turning of thundering great fun.
     I can hear the roars and grunts, and even the smells, and it makes me laugh out loud with each page turned.
     This is not a book where the artwork has been skimped on. No, the art work is of the highest standard and in keeping with the story.
     It doesn’t matter what place a kid’s dad plays in this story, or on what side, or for what country, his dad is the hero.
     A fantastic read from start to finish.
     Thoroughly enjoyable.

Review by Susan Tarr

Title: My Old Man He Played Rugby
Author: Peter Millett. Illustrator: Jenny Cooper; Vocalist: Jay Laga’aia
Publisher: Scholastic NZ
ISBN: 9781775435280
RRP: $19.99 paperback and CD
Available: bookshops

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Sad story worth reading

18/10/2018

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Odyssey of the Unknown ANZAC
by David Hastings

Thanks to the centenary of Gallipoli not so long ago and the approaching 100th anniversary of the end of World War 1 there have been a plethora of books published about it, but this one is different. It is the type of book that makes history come alive.
Many of us know of families affected by the war service of a loved one, the nightmares, low times, depression, war neurosis, hysteria, amnesia, alcoholism and inability to love and cope with life after the horrors they have seen. During World War 1 it was called shell-shock. These days we know it as PTSD but whatever it is called it causes as much, if not more, illness, unhappiness and death as physical injuries.
The blurb describes author David Hastings’ remarkable job as “tenacity in researching” and indeed it is, considering he was dealing with records a century old.
He follows the story of a young man, George McQuay, from enlistment in 1915 first to Gallipoli then the western front where he saw horrors most of us can barely imagine.
Next, George was found wandering in civilian clothes but wearing an Australian soldier’s hat. After the war he was repatriated to Australia and admitted to Callan Park Psychiatric Hospital in Sydney where he was known as the unknown patient as there was some doubt whether he had even been a soldier.
In 1928 the Returned Sailors & Soldier’s Imperial League of Australia distributed a flyer with a photograph of George throughout Australia and New Zealand asking for help identifying him, which led to him being recognised and returned to Stratford and his family.
It is not a story of heroics and great deeds but, rather, one of an ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The story is told with empathy and whilst it doesn’t really end happily it does afford closure and serves to remind us all that war is never the answer.
Congratulations to David Hastings for a sad story well told and worth reading.

Review by Rewa Vivienne

Title: Odyssey of the Unknown ANZAC
Author: David Hastings
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408824
RRP: $34.99
Available: bookshops

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First-hand knowledge of past times

13/10/2018

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Two Slices of Bread – A Memoir
by Ingrid Coles

This book is titled perfectly. The author has picked out a moment in memories of her life that must surely affect any reader.
Even if we haven’t ourselves experienced long periods of hunger, reading of the amazement of a little girl at being allowed two pieces of bread, after so long being lucky to get one, is very moving.
Ingrid Coles’ memoir first covers her early years in Indonesia where she was born, particularly the Japanese prisoner of war camp in Java where her mother and siblings were interned – years that were to have ongoing effects throughout their lives. They were the lucky ones in that her father and a brother didn’t make it, but both physical and mental legacies of those times took their toll on survivors.
Further chapters tell of life in Holland after repatriation, where problems still beset the struggling family, then Ingrid’s emigration to New Zealand, at the age of sixteen.
Along the way there is lots of information of life in the war (WW2) and post-war years in Indonesia, Netherlands, and then New Zealand – well organized into appropriate chapters. The editing is good, and it is easily read throughout.
Overall, the production is attractive – photos, sketches and maps are provided to elaborate and enhance the story. Text print is clear, though the lack of mirror-margins makes left-hand pages difficult to read due to narrow gutters.
In this time when such stories are being revived, this memoir adds further first-hand knowledge of past times, lest we forget.

Review by J.M.

Title: Two Slices of Bread
Author: Ingrid Coles
Publisher: Wild Side Publishing
ISBN: 978-0473428907
RRP: $39.99
Available: bookshops

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Companion books by mother and daughter

10/10/2018

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Review deleted

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Utopian appeal in YA book

4/10/2018

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Child Power
by Raewyn Dawson

There is a certain utopian appeal to a community that lives by a code called the Peace Way.
Despite my cynicism about the possibility of a world (especially now) living according to such a code I admired the author’s optimism and the way her characters espoused their belief in living according to the Peace Way.
However, it is clear that maintaining the Peace Way comes at a cost and that is to use ‘outstanding fighting skills'.
This is a Young Adult novel and the story line engaged me from the start. The baddies got what they had coming to them and the protagonist, with her band of dedicated followers, showed that good can win over evil.
There is a certain irony that within a few pages of starting this book I encountered a graphic battle between the followers of the Peace Way and some bandits. As the novel unfolds it becomes abundantly clear that this Amazon tribe of young women are skilled and ferocious fighters. The Peace Way has to be mercilessly fought for.
But then they take up good causes and find ingenious ways to solve problems. It would be a spoiler to give too much away about some of the challenges they encountered and resolved.
The story moves along at a great pace in a world run by young people. I thoroughly enjoyed its energy and its optimism.
And I don’t know how anyone could write about a utopian world without it being set against dystopia as a backdrop. Otherwise how do we know good without being able to compare it to evil? Two characters in particular epitomise this juxtaposition – the evil doers Mithrida and Nigel. Although banished to an island they still cast a menacing shadow over the people of the Plains.
Good versus evil is the underlying theme of ‘Child Power’ and Raewyn Dawson takes the reader on a journey in a world that is cast from the imagination with reference to some Greek History which makes the Amazon story authentic.
In the shadowy world of evil the characters are hazy and ghostlike. In the world of good, characters are sharply cast and we warm to them. The victims of evil also suffer and the young people whose mission is to save the hapless victims find an ingenious way to carry out their mission.
Quite how a writer would deal with a community living the Peace Way without them having to overcome evil with violence I don’t know. I wonder if that dilemma ever troubled the author. It would seem not, because I feel sure that the next book in the Amazon series will also have the heroines conquering anti-heroes.
It is a super book and I can imagine a young reader, especially a young girl, devouring every word.

Review by Suraya Dewing
CEO, Stylefit (formerly The Story Mint) http://www.thestorymint.com

Title: Child Power
Author: Raewyn Dawson
Publisher: Mary Egan Publishing
ISBN: 9780473435271
RRP: $20
Available: bookshops

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Striking book

Attention to history in novel

Social history of sport

Book’s ideas recommended

WW1 memoir an eloquent protest

A real boys’ book

Sad story worth reading

First-hand knowledge of past times

Companion books by mother and daughter

Utopian appeal in YA book

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