Arapeta, by Peter Tashkoff
Peter Tashkoff is Ngāti Porou; his novel Arapeta (on Amazon - and it's print-on-demand so it's *always* going to be 'only one left' - or for the Kindle) takes us a couple thousand years into the future, when humanity is scattered among the stars and Earth is half myth. Arapeta is the second son of the chief of the backwater planet Aotea, where the people follow traditional ways of farming, fishing, fighting, and living. Only problem is that his family has a secret vein of pounamu (NZ-English: greenstone; overseas-English: jade) which is this universe's dilithium crystals, needed to power pretty much everything - and the secret leaks out to the broader universe. Colonialism ensues.
I found the book hard to get into to start with because of the prose. Particularly noticeable was the way every time a Māori word or phrase was introduced, it was immediately followed by the English translation, without regard to how clunky this ended up being. I'm more used to "incluing" techniques where you carefully place the unfamiliar word in a context that lets the reader figure it out for themself. I can see though why the author used this technique: there's a lot of vocabulary to introduce, and us Pākehā aren't famous for working hard at learning the Māori language....
But after I picked the book up again, I really got into it. It's set mostly in a completely Māori-centric world - plus space travel, nanites for medical care and body modification, genetic engineered soldiers, forcefields, hovercraft, and planet-destroying bombs. Through the main characters we get to care about his world, and through other characters we get a sense of the wider universe.
The book is set up to excoriate greed (more than I would: as things start getting really bad, the villagers decide that the leaking of the secret about their stash of pounamu is partly their fault for being "greedy" enough that they traded small bits of pounamu for technology like the forcefield that protects the village and the nanite packs that make them strong warriors) and the way greed leads to the abuses of colonialism. What I loved was it didn't go the simplistic route of having just the peaceful villagers vs the evil colonisers. There were more layers:
On feminism, or not-much-thereof: The book (and it seemed the societies therein) is primarily male-focused, but there were a number of female characters, fairly varied in their roles. I liked Maddy, who struck me as kind of the power behind a certain general's throne in that efficient-personal-assistant sort of way. Unfortunately we only saw her for one scene. Of the four major female characters, three were ultimately love interests (competent in their own ways but still, destined for marriage and motherhood) and the fourth, being too ambitious for her own good, was eventually seduced to the dark side by Turkish delight (and a heck of a lot of the money, but the Turkish delight that came with it diverted me greatly) and her career comes to a Bad End. In the meantime, the only scene that kind of passes the Bechdel Test came on page 278 of 301, when in the midst of the horrors of war, a woman who's been raped and harassed by the soldiers comes to Māreikura (the daughter of the chief's rival, whose marriage with the chief's son is to unite Aotea), for the protection Māreikura can barely provide herself.
On heteronormativity: Te Amo - pilot and best friend of another pilot who's fallen head over heels for their spaceship commander - early on says that *she's* never going to be lovesick for a man. At first I hopefully interpreted this as her being lesbian, but no; and by the end of the book she'd attached herself to Our Hero Arapeta. (On the plus side, at the end of the book she keeps her career! But this means that due to regulations she can't marry him and have babies, and he's a bit sad about that.) Other than this the only thing even near a reference to homosexual behaviour is oblique hints that the villain is threatening to sexually molest his male captives; the author is less oblique about this character's later intentions to rape his female captives.
A couple random sentences I liked:
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I'd like to read a lot more sf by Māori authors but first this means discovering it. So far, the combined research of me and another librarian have turned up Arapeta and:
The nice librarian also pointed me to Huia Publishing, which prints mainly Māori and indigenous authors and works.
I found the book hard to get into to start with because of the prose. Particularly noticeable was the way every time a Māori word or phrase was introduced, it was immediately followed by the English translation, without regard to how clunky this ended up being. I'm more used to "incluing" techniques where you carefully place the unfamiliar word in a context that lets the reader figure it out for themself. I can see though why the author used this technique: there's a lot of vocabulary to introduce, and us Pākehā aren't famous for working hard at learning the Māori language....
But after I picked the book up again, I really got into it. It's set mostly in a completely Māori-centric world - plus space travel, nanites for medical care and body modification, genetic engineered soldiers, forcefields, hovercraft, and planet-destroying bombs. Through the main characters we get to care about his world, and through other characters we get a sense of the wider universe.
The book is set up to excoriate greed (more than I would: as things start getting really bad, the villagers decide that the leaking of the secret about their stash of pounamu is partly their fault for being "greedy" enough that they traded small bits of pounamu for technology like the forcefield that protects the village and the nanite packs that make them strong warriors) and the way greed leads to the abuses of colonialism. What I loved was it didn't go the simplistic route of having just the peaceful villagers vs the evil colonisers. There were more layers:
- On Aotea there are two factions, rivals for the chieftainship: the present Ariki is descended from the daughter of a chief who had no sons, and his rival is descended from her male cousin. These two factions are used by the offworlders, and they use the offworlders in turn.
- The first sign of trouble comes from thieves and ruffians, easily defeated - but who let the secret leak further afield.
- Second comes the Confederacy of United Tribes (COUT). These are also Māori, but more "urbanised" - they use more technology and are more casual about their traditions. They mostly have one Māori and one European name, in contrast to the Māori of Aotea whose names are fully Māori.
- While we still think that the COUT are the Colonial Menace, we get introduced to their powerful enemy, the Hakkari Empire. At least the part we see of it is modelled on the Byzantine Empire, though the names of the characters are mostly European - the Pasha, Elijah Logan, is probably the main antagonist of the book. (Btw, the author is of Turkish descent too. [ETA 9am: In retrospect I may have misconstrued this, so I'll quote him: "my own name, which is in fact Bulgarian, by way of the city that my father insisted on calling Constantinopolis".])
- And just as we're getting adjusted to this addition to the conflict, the universe opens up to the Rim Council, where the rest of humanity (Inuit chair; official language Mandarin) is debating the conflict and
- delegates from the aliens of Q'om and Bharatoi are trying to find ways they can profit from the whole debacle.
On feminism, or not-much-thereof: The book (and it seemed the societies therein) is primarily male-focused, but there were a number of female characters, fairly varied in their roles. I liked Maddy, who struck me as kind of the power behind a certain general's throne in that efficient-personal-assistant sort of way. Unfortunately we only saw her for one scene. Of the four major female characters, three were ultimately love interests (competent in their own ways but still, destined for marriage and motherhood) and the fourth, being too ambitious for her own good, was eventually seduced to the dark side by Turkish delight (and a heck of a lot of the money, but the Turkish delight that came with it diverted me greatly) and her career comes to a Bad End. In the meantime, the only scene that kind of passes the Bechdel Test came on page 278 of 301, when in the midst of the horrors of war, a woman who's been raped and harassed by the soldiers comes to Māreikura (the daughter of the chief's rival, whose marriage with the chief's son is to unite Aotea), for the protection Māreikura can barely provide herself.
On heteronormativity: Te Amo - pilot and best friend of another pilot who's fallen head over heels for their spaceship commander - early on says that *she's* never going to be lovesick for a man. At first I hopefully interpreted this as her being lesbian, but no; and by the end of the book she'd attached herself to Our Hero Arapeta. (On the plus side, at the end of the book she keeps her career! But this means that due to regulations she can't marry him and have babies, and he's a bit sad about that.) Other than this the only thing even near a reference to homosexual behaviour is oblique hints that the villain is threatening to sexually molest his male captives; the author is less oblique about this character's later intentions to rape his female captives.
A couple random sentences I liked:
- When you looked past the surprise attack and porridgey accent, this guy was quite a hoot.
- Seven and a half minutes away, if you were a sunbeam, and happened to be lost at an awkward tangent off the horizontal plane of the planetary system [...]
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I'd like to read a lot more sf by Māori authors but first this means discovering it. So far, the combined research of me and another librarian have turned up Arapeta and:
- Skydancer by Witi Ihimaera (read; I'll try to read it again and review it as time allows)
- Inna Furey by Isabel Waiti-Mulholland
- Ripples on the Lake by Dawn Rotarangi
The nice librarian also pointed me to Huia Publishing, which prints mainly Māori and indigenous authors and works.