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Intriguing tale for young readers

17/7/2019

Tails
by W J Scott

Time and place – that of wizards, castles, magic. Most magical beasts, however, have disappeared – dragon, unicorn, and phoenix among them.
But Silvertails, though thought by humans and wizards to be extinct, still survive.
Silvertails are small 4-legged creatures, cat-like with long tails and pink or purple fur. Or maybe they’re closer to dogs, in that they bark and howl and live in packs. They’re vegetarian, talk, can understand human speech, and have abilities beyond those of other animals.
Their tails are the repository of super senses, known as tail-sense. So what happens when a young male, Kywah, loses his in an encounter with hunters? Taillessness is more than merely the lack of an appendage in Silvertail society – it puts Kywah, and his pack, in danger from their enemies – hunters who sell pelts of all animals, and magicians who are desperate to obtains the magical qualities of the Silvertail’s fur, particularly their tails.
For the sake of the pack, Kywah must undertake a hazardous mission that involves chases, intrigue, with several groups in contention – all of which must be outrun by this gutsy but tailless Silvertail.
This is Book 1 of the Silver Wishes series for young readers. It ends on a satisfying note while pointing to the pack’s further adventures to come.
It is well-written and includes some illustrations.
Will I watch for Book 2? Yes, indeed.

Review by Emily R

Title: Tails
Author: WJ Scott
Publisher: Wendy Scott Books
ISBN: 978-0-473-47117-0
RRP: $15 CopyPress; RealNZBooks https://shop.realnzbooks.co.nz/shopn/spi/books_15973
Amazon US paperback $13.99
Available: Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078FX66QD and as above

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Superb in every detail

5/7/2019

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Ake Ake Kia Kaha E! Forever Brave – B Company 28 (Maori) Battalion 1939–1945
by Wira Gardiner

This is a monumental book in several ways. To begin with, its size quite sets it apart from any other war history this reviewer has read, for at 449 pages and weighing 2.2 kg, reading it on one’s knee is an invitation to an interrupted blood supply so that one is tempted to suggest that this coffee-table book might well replace the coffee table in its entirety.
     However, and less facetiously, the book’s presentation is superb in every detail from beautifully-crafted endpapers through pages of sumptuous glossiness and a text superbly supported by images that, while containing their fair share of photographs that one would expect in a regimental history, more than occasionally go beyond that to throw up striking and timeless illustrations of what it means to be a Maori warrior. When that happens, the experience is akin to seeing a ray of sunlight pick out a salient feature of the landscape.
     This begins on the page facing the Foreword with the totally arresting image of Hupa Hamiora pouring his spirit into the battalion’s tug-of-war team in leading a spontaneous haka; it continues through pictures of bayonet drill of understated lethality and Bren gunners who radiate a calm and practised precision in laying down fire, all the way to the picture of an un-named soldier in the Western Desert posing with a bayonet and a huge and toothless grin. To this reviewer, these images synthesise the way in which 28 (Maori) Battalion took men from backgrounds that were usually underprivileged, often educationally-deprived and more often than not economically challenged and overcame problems that ranged from fitting Maori feet into Pakeha-made boots to training ill-educated agricultural labourers for warfare in a technical age. All driven by the ‘way of the warrior’ that turned the Battalion into a fighting-force greatly admired by the legendary ‘Desert Fox’, Erwin Rommel, himself one of the 20thcentury’s greatest warriors.
     The book owes much to JF Cody’s official history of the parent organisation, 28 (Maori) Battalion, but that is inevitable. Where it is different is in its presentation to the niche market of the heartland of Te Arawa and Mataatua, and it offers an account of these men’s war that is comprehensive to the point, sometimes, of detracting from the narrative flow in order to detail who did what, with whom and when. Again, however, the book’s positioning for a specific market almost guarantees this, and anyone seeking the ‘broad sweep’ still has Cody’s excellent history available.
     Gardiner’s decision to background ‘B’ Company’s war story in the social and economic milieu of its participants is an outstanding part of the book, as is his treatment of 28 Battalion’s efforts to keep alive the manaof the ‘greatest tauain history’ in post-war years. He neither shirks nor sweeps under the rug the less pleasant aspects of the Company’s story: the PTSD, the treatment, even from their own comrades, of PoWs, problems of rehabilitation and the differentiated social and economic treatment accorded returned men.
     What might have been done better? The short answer is: very little. However, the work might have been enhanced by more searching content-editing. There are a number of non-sequitursthroughout, as well as places where one story is interrupted by another; and two examples occur in Chapter 4 ‘Greece’, where the narrative is interrupted by a sizeable account of what captured officers did in captivity within Germany, and again in Chapter 6  ‘The Home Front’ which is much more concerned with troop movements than its advertised content. Large-scale maps that feature restricted areas are also an irritant especially in the seminal battles of Crete and the Western Desert because these are where the weapon that was ‘B’ Company and its parent was forged.
     However the critical eye is less important to this wonderful book than the size of the lump in the throat when reading of the carnage of Takrouna among ‘B’ Company’s officers and NCOs, or the devastation wrought by the Gazala battle among whole home communities in ‘B ‘Company’s recruiting area, or the fact that the battle for the Cassino railway station took 74% of the Company’s strength and left it but one officer. Neither is the size of that lump diminished by the unrewarded exploits of the Manahis and the Horopaperas, nor the suffering of the Wikiriwhis. In the context of the understated bravery that is really understated heroism, it is fitting that Gardiner and his fine team not only include a Roll of Honour for the fallen but a photograph of every man of ‘B’ Company that they could find.
     In all ways and all things, these men and their comrades more than lived up to the accolade bestowed on their Queenite forebears of the Arawa Constabulary almost a century before: Te Arawa piri pono. ‘The Arawa: loyal and true.’

Review by MJ Burr

Title: Ake Ake Kia Kaha E! Forever Brave - B Company 28 (Maori) Battalion 1939–1945
Author: Wira Gardiner
Publisher: Bateman Books
ISBN: 978 -1-86953-985-6
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshops

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Narrative of total faith

1/7/2019

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The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage
by Amy Leigh Wicks

These poems are a journey from one geographical place to another – New York to New Zealand – and from one spiritual place to another, “home” in both cases. Wicks uses a range of poetic forms that match the scope of her journey: villanelles, sestina, haiku, sonnets, for starters. There are devotional forms – canticles and psalms, and prose poems labelled as ‘log notes’. As befits work by a poet born at St Vincent’s Hospital, there are syllabics lurking in corners, not quite visible.
Of course, at the beginning we don’t know what the story will be:

Who doesn’t hope
for a fishing net
to come heavy
from the water with
an old locked box
caught in the net?

You might ask
how did the box
swim into the net?
And I might say

that is between
  the box and me.     (‘Loretta’ p 7)

Enter love. Enter changes in landscapes, feelings, and tastes. ‘Paysage moralisé’ is inspired by Auden’s sestina of the same name, a sensual riff on islands, cities, love and food, ending:
The mountains
out west are pink and gold in the morning. No mountains
are here. Manhattan, Staten, my beautiful dirty islands
are not his. He does not know my sorrow
or my happiness but he knows how to hold me. Jersey City
is lit up across the water
almost beautiful. I might be unravelling.

We are floating on the water
when the sun comes up slowly, heavily –
we are drifting further and further from dry land.    (p 22)
Enter New Zealand, and enter new strangenesses. A kitchen haiku is called ‘When I halve them’ and says:
the purple veins blooming in yellow flesh
remind me that home is far          (p 35)
The devotional poems carry much of the weight of the book, and can’t really be done justice to in one review. I was enchanted by the rendering of ‘Psalm CXXXIX: In translation’.
Where could I go from your spirit?
How can I run from everywhere?

If I build a tower through the clouds into the gold
of heaven you will be there. If I fall asleep in the black
of hell, you will be there, resting cool beside me.

If I lift off from the cliffs with the gulls, and my body
rests at the bottom of the sea, your hand will reach
for mine, your hand will pull me toward yourself.   (p 61)
I had a mild pang losing ‘the wings of the morning’ (though gulls do swoop better) but was happy to see Wicks drop the lines on hatred that appear in the kosher versions of the psalm.
And while we’re on tradition, ‘Ritual’ gives us the truly awesome thought of an earthquake (we are in Kaikōura now) during a Passover seder, as the door opens for Elijah:
The house trembles, a few books fall from the shelf
and Vivienne swears before diving under her chair.
Everything is still again. Where is he?     (p 72)
I was trying to figure out a description for this collection – travel narrative? poetry of witness? devotions? – and the penny dropped: In The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage, Amy Leigh Wicks is giving us a contemporary Pilgrim’s Progress – 21st century language, 21st century landscape – and it’s a wonderful job. Don’t bother plotting the two works against each other: the 17th century is too long gone – but both present a narrative of total faith, written by a poet trusting this certainty to get them through life in a world that doesn’t always have enough space for this sort of thing.

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage
Author: Amy Leigh Wicks
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978 1 86940 897
RRP: $24.99
Available: bookshops

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Intriguing tale for young readers

Superb in every detail

Narrative of total faith

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