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Murder in the future

26/5/2017

Notice of Death (Book 3 in the Ryxin trilogy)
by Genesis Cotterell

Revenge is the underlying theme of this third murder mystery, set in New Zealand some time in the future.
Since there are different laws for different ethnic groups – Humans and Ryxins – private Ryxin investigators Curtis McCoy and Janux Lennan have the task of finding the dead Ryxin woman’s killer. Janux is close to completing her PI training – an achievement which will make her Curtis’s partner in the agency and will allow them to legitimise their own relationship as a couple. During this investigation, we see Janux finally realising her own worth as an investigator and sticking up for herself in her work and personal relationships with Curtis.
Once again, as in the first two books in the trilogy, in Notice of Death, Cotterell’s low-key writing style can lull the reader into thinking that this is an easy read. And once again, there is much more lurking between the lines. As well as the question of revenge versus forgiveness, and whether or not revenge brings satisfaction and peace, Cotterell deals with issues such as adult bullying and the trilogy’s recurring theme of first and second-class citizenship.
Although Curtis and Janux drink an alarming amount of whisky in this book, they do manage to solve the latest mystery along with an overlapping cold case, so that the trilogy is brought to a fairly satisfying conclusion.
Janux has matured greatly since we first met her as the widow of a recent murder victim in Murder on Muritai (Book 1 in the trilogy) and as most of the main figures in Notice of Death are women, this book unfolds largely from her point of view.
I would have liked to see Curtis become a warmer, more sensitive man, but without other Ryxin men to compare him with, it is impossible to know whether he could ever share any of the positive traits of modern human men as we know them. Because he remains cool and distant, I found the way he resolves his personal quandary at the close of the book rather superficial, hasty and disappointing.
Readers coming to the Ryxin world of Muritai Island without having read Books 1 and 2 in the trilogy will be wondering who on earth the Ryxins are. I feel a brief overview of Ryxin lore, at the beginning of the book, would be useful to new readers and a helpful reminder to those of us who have already enjoyed Murder on Muritai and The Forbidden Gene.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie
Writer, freelance proofreader, copy editor, and translator from Italian to English.
Carolyn kindly offers accommodation at reasonable rates for FlaxFlower writers
in Thames (Waikato) and Ventimiglia Alta (Liguria, Italy ). carolynmckenzie@libero.it

ED NOTE: Murder on Muritai, Book 1 in the Ryxin Trilogy, was reviewed on this site on 13 July 2016, and Book 2 on 15 November 2016. Access the reviews via Archives on right sidebar. They are both available, RRP print $30, from the author’s website, Wheelers Books; Beattie & Forbes Bookseller, Napier; Onekawa Books & Gifts, Napier. Digital: Amazon.

Title: Notice of Death — Book 3 of The Ryxin Trilogy
Author: Genesis Cotterell
Publisher: P Hayes
ISBN: 978-0-473-39638-1 (Print); ASIN: B01NH9U4AZ (Amazon Kindle)
RRP: $30 Print Copy
Available: Print: From author’s website: genesiscotterell.com (contact form); and Wheelers Books. Digital: Amazon

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A challenging experience

18/5/2017

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The Roaring Silence: A compendium of interviews, essays, poetry, art and prose about suicide

This book is a compendium about suicide. And that makes it hard to review. I can say that Amelia Harris and Julia West have done a good job in the editing and design of the book. Certainly the design is impressive, both in the cover and the page layout.
     The Roaring Silence is a mixture of text and art, with some interviews in the first section. Then comes some poetry, followed by the art and cartoon work on higher quality paper. This is followed by a section called ‘Raw’, a title which conveys the kind of writing by the authors, and then there’s another prose section at the end.
While the reader will expect to read about some really ‘raw’ and painful experiences, these are mainly the stories of survivors. Most of them are by locals trying to exist in communities, and cope with personal issues and their role in families. There is also some writing from professional authors living overseas. This adds to the mix but I wondered whether the underlying theme, how New Zealanders deal with this issue, was somewhat diluted. But mostly I wondered whether any amount of writing could actually change – if not minds, then perhaps – perceptions. Apart from the more factual subject matter in some of the interviews, everything seems so subjective.
     Due to the very personal experiences being shared it is difficult to refer to the specific pieces of writing in The Roaring Silence. Though I did find Natasha Lay’s piece very effective, ‘Death and Taxes’, which has also been performed as a play. The writing refers to the experience of a friend, named Sylvia, who begins to regain control of her own situation through her perseverance in filling out her tax return. The interaction with a phoneline staffer adds perspective, but the tale is designed to show how to de-stigmatise the conversation about suicide. As Lay writes, people usually don’t want anything to do with discussing the suicide option, which is a way of demonising it.
As the reviewer should I state a personal position as well? I’m squeamish about suicide because my cousin killed herself, and the family did get some warning about her state from a friend. Confronting the subject matter in The Roaring Silence has not really changed my mind on this, or the assumed link with a depressive illness being a cause. In this case it turned out to be a history of partner control and abuse, rather than an assessment of individual psychological illness, that was causative. I think this kind of situation has not been highlighted in the book, i.e. reactions to bad relationships.
     Anyway, I was impressed with the artwork in the book, and thought there could have been more. In fact, I think it would be easier to read the book if the artwork and cartoons were interspersed with the text, rather than being in a separate section. But, overall, The Roaring Silence is a challenging experience and worthy of consideration.

Review by S A Boyce

Title: The Roaring Silence: A compendium of interviews, essays, poetry, art and prose about suicide
Editor: Amelia Harris
RRP: $30.00
Publisher: The Depot Press
ISBN: 978 0473 377458
RRP: $30.00 + post
Available: Email: margaux.wong@depotartspace.co.nz

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Fast paced thriller

9/5/2017

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The Chinese Proverb
by Tina Clough

The minimalistic, but striking cover hints at the premise of the novel; if you save a life you are now responsible for the person you rescued.
Afghanistan war veteran, Hunter Grant, willingly embraces this concept when he finds a stranger near death on his remote Northland bush property. The mystery deepens when he discovers she’d been shackled and was prepared to die rather than be recaptured by her tormentor; whom she refers to as Master.
By page two I was hooked by the foreboding sense of danger and I wanted to know Dao’s backstory of how she’d been enslaved and escaped, and why she was still being hunted.
Emotionally scarred by his war experiences, Hunter has maintained a distance within his relationships with women. Now he has to open up his feelings so he can handle Dao’s fragile physical and mental state, and gain her trust so she will divulge the secrets of her past life, before Master tracks her down and eliminates her.
Hunter, places himself firmly in the firing line as they unravel the mystery of Dao’s life, but Dao is more than a victim, she’s a survivor, who has her own role to play in her destiny. As the story develops the complexity of her character is revealed. The bond between Scruff, Hunter’s dog, and Dao enhances the human aspects of the unfolding drama, as the details of her horrific ordeal are uncovered.
The book pages are cleanly presented in a no fuss style. There’s a clearly defined timeline as the story is filtered through Hunter’s point of view. Crisp descriptive language visually portrays the rural forest settings and the urban cityscape of Auckland.
Suspense fuels this tightly written and fast paced New Zealand thriller that grips from the beginning.

Review by Wendy Scott

Title: The Chinese Proverb
Author: Tina Clough
Publisher: Lightpool Publishing
ISBN: 978-0473379261
RRP: $34.99
Available: Bookshops

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Something of exceptional value

1/5/2017

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Māori Oral Tradition: He Kōrero nō te Ao Tawhito
by Jane McRae

Most New Zealanders will be familiar with certain names, incidents or texts from Māori oral tradition: migration stories, or the exploits of Māui, for instance. These are from a tradition of huge variety and depth, much of it transcribed during the nineteenth century either directly by Māori, or through collections assembled by interested Pākehā.
This book offers a way of looking at those traditions, dividing them into categories according to their structure and purpose. So we have genealogies (whakapapa), sayings and proverbs (whakataukī), narratives, histories, stories and myths (kōrero), and songs and chants (waiata)
Illustrative examples in Maori, with English translations, are given throughout. Even those with little knowledge of Māori language will find it rewarding to read aloud the Māori versions, in order to hear the rhythms and imagine the dramatic pauses and emphases – those things that are lost in translation and, to some extent, simply by being put into writing.
Language both affects the way the world is viewed and, in turn, is heavily influenced by that world view. In considering Māori oral traditions, the author demonstrates how particular words and phrases, or particular names, were used to prompt the recollection of incidents or other people or stories associated with them. Thus what might seem to a reader of the transcripts to be overly brief or incomplete narratives would have been, to the listeners on the marae, oral performances rich in meaning.
Throughout the book, there is commentary on and illustration of the way the traditions reflect the inner life of Māori in the old world – the deep significance of immediate family and of wider social groupings, of ties to land, of key ancestral figures, of reciprocities, the satisfaction of victories and the pain of defeats. There is drama. There is poetry. It is a literature unique to this country, yet it is an important part, too, of universal oral traditions, and thus of world literature. Furthermore, as the author points out, these oral traditions continue to be “a real and influential part of the Māori world.”
The author says: “Knowledge in the oral society…did not come from one kind of text alone…” Indeed not; and the same could be said of the ‘literary’ world. A reading of the novels from, say, Victorian England, will provide a deeper, more intuitive knowledge of what it was like to have been a part of life there, in that time, than could any history book. We understand the past best when we experience it through the literature, oral or written, of those who lived it.
It is impossible in a brief review to pay sufficient tribute to the accessible style in which this book is written, and to the many significant issues that are raised in it. The author states that one of her main aims in writing it was to encourage Māori language and literature students to discover more of the riches to be found in the “manuscript trove” of transcribed oral literature; and surely any such student reading the book would be enthused. But for the general reader, the book offers insights into the contribution Māori oral tradition can make to an understanding of what it should mean to be a New Zealander, and what it means to be human.
Auckland University Press has played its part in making this book pleasurable. The layout is neat and reader-friendly. The scholarly endnotes, and the comprehensive bibliography and index, are useful without being obtrusive. It has that rare thing, a cover that enhances the text, the symbolism incorporated there being succinctly explained in a note on the reverse of the title page. Physically, the book provides the sort of tactile and visual pleasure that is exclusive to an admirably assembled combination of ink and paper.
But of course it really comes down to the text, and without doubt the author has written something of exceptional value. Read it. Be enriched.

Review by Tony Chapelle

Title: Māori Oral Tradition: He Kōrero nō te Ao Tawhito
Author: Jane McRae
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978 1 86940 861 9
RRP: $45
Available: bookshops

Comments

Murder in the future

A challenging experience

Fast paced thriller

Something of exceptional value

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