Jacey Bedford's Journal

I've either had my nose stuck in my computer keyboard or in a good book since Saturday. The computer keyboard actyivity wasn't anything exciting like finishing the last two chapters of Spider on the Web - oh no, not at all - it was music related database tidying and cross-checking, Boring but necessary as I'm going to have to spend the next week on music-work-related stuff.

But I have been reading, too. Terry Pratchett's Nation and Patricia Briggs' Dragon Bones (and I'm halfway through her Dragon's Blood). Booklog entries coming soon.

ferlonda  and dadgaderie  are on tour in the UK right now and have been staying with us since 1st Feb. They've just departed for ten days in various venues in the south. When they've not been gigging we've been watching back to back episodes of Doctor Who - season 4, Lost - season 4 and Battlestar Galactica - season 4.1. Guilty pleasures. We'd just started Torchwood - season 2 when it was time for them to leave, so I'm not DVD watching until they get back. They're gigging in Baldock tonight, Folkestone tomorrow and Southampton on Friday. Here's their website.

A far cry from Discworld, this is supposedly a book for children and I guess the success of it is that it can be read on different levels – each reader taking away what they want or expect from it. On the surface it’s a story about two young people, Mau and Daphne, thrown together on a desert island after a tsunami washes away his people and wrecks her boat, leaving her as the only survivor. The setting is ‘somewhere in an alternative South Pacific’ and ‘somewhen roughly in the (probably) early nineteenth century'. The storyline is simple and centres on Mau rebuilding his Nation (the island) after the devastation, taking in first Daphne and then other drifting survivors to make a new community.

Underneath this it’s the story of the rebuilding of both Mau and Daphne, and through them a re-examination of ideas about spirituality, philosophy and tradition. It’s also a book about practical culture-clash – or rather a softer culture-bump as Daphne discovers that Mau is not a savage and Mau tries to understand Daphne’s strange ‘trouserman’ ideas. There are some wry misunderstandings and some misconceptions, but in the end Mau and Daphne and the rest of their growing Nation reach an amicable understanding, but then the real savages arrive and most savage of all is a dangerous trouserman mutineer set adrift from Daphne’s own ship before the tsunami hit.

Nation is a gentle book, almost restrained, but it doesn’t hold back from darkness, especially for Mau’s character, deeply damaged by the loss of his people and railing at both the gods who let them die and the dead ancestors who won’t leave his thoughts alone. In the end Mau and Daphne together find a way to protect the emerging Nation from an even bigger threat.