Pre-colonial New Zealand captured in new novel

In the past (the 1600s) Te Raki, a South Island Mori chief, releases and later carves a replica of a yellow eel.

In the 1800s, a youthful female warrior, Akineki, separated from her tribe, falls from a cliff. She forms a liaison with Red, an abandoned mute sealer, and they journey up the island to her ancestral home.

In modern times, a researcher in Mori music, Bobbi Peters, living at Kaiapoi, has a series of nightmares relating to an inter-tribal war of the 19h century, and meets up with her cousin, Katarina Ti-Toi, a dress designer. Katarina and her cousin, Sonny, visit a sacred site to remember the sacrifices of tribal women.

This is a fairly realised novel for its ambitious scope. It covers a lot of detail as it stitches together three eras successfully, that will probably ensure the book's extended life beyond the initial rush of curious readers: the possibility of turning it into a film script a la Jane Campion exists, I would hope.

This is a much better book than the author's previous first novel. The historical detail of the Mori conflicts makes the factual bony skeleton and the gender issues meld together fairly well.

Bobbi and her cousin are believable; ideological axes to grind don't surface thankfully. The balance between writing an international novel and one cramped by its historical location also is to be commended. The different relationships of Red and Akinehi and Bobbi Peters and her cousin are sufficiently sketched in to support the story without overwhelming it.

The stories of the yellow eel and the greenstone are engaging historical tropes that travel down the years and resurface in the novel. They work well as informative elements without being exotic add-ons on to a story that would have enough foreign colour for most people unfamiliar with the Mori wars. The book is entertaining and enlightening with enough character and believable characters.

From the author, I deduced a considerable amount of quasi political negotiation was necessary to get this book hatched, i.e. micro tuning nationalist rumblings emerging made it difficult enough to steer the canoe around the rocks and rapids. The describing of the history that is the backdrop is well done, late in the day, but any later Romanticism or pop culture dramatisations would have quasi smudged out the integrity needed to convey the story properly.

Also, the author described the nationalist snapping around her by some who possibly wish to puff up the fire of nationalism/tribalism for their own ends.

The writer has also resisted creating a magic realist novel. This is much applauded; no doubt someone will do so in the future. Also, is the resistance to insert heroic figures to glamourise the past; no doubt someone will, if a film surfaces.

Without these tropes, what do we have? A fairly good balance of the personal, i.e., between the women and their interests, some interesting anthropology of the not too distant past, and the intriguing eel story. The tale of the eel in the swamp negotiating the upright moa leg bones stitches in natural history. Similarly, the description of Te Raki's curse conveys the pride and hubris of the young Te Raki without condemning him for being who and what he is, in his time.

Not a pop novel at all, this book will reward those who persist with its steady pace, in the unveiling of a tale that needs airing, the anthropological/history of a back story of New Zealand's past before colonialism.

Published independently, The Eel of Te Raki is available at Gleebooks, Blackheath and Good Earth Bookshop, Wentworth Falls.