Kindle. A lengthy, engrossing everything novel in the spirit of his earlier Parasites Like Us (2003). After a stuttered start I finished it in a few lengthy sessions.
In broad terms Johnson takes us to the Tongan empire of a while back, when they were having a forever war with Fiji, but only after a peppy first-person beginning from a young woman that evoked Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005). Soon enough we're told that she's from that other great tribe of Polynesians, the Māori, and her small, diminishing and amnesiac clan has much to teach the peoples of other islands. This is despite their lack of lineage (they are descended from slaves) and the basic skills of navigation and shipbuilding.
The genocidal war is necessitated by the resource exhaustion, ecological collapse and steady flow of extinctions caused by the overpopulation and cupidity of the imperial centre. Much of this is directly observed by an imported red-shining parrot (apparently tasty) that is sufficiently sapient to comprehend the apocalypse being visited on the ecosphere by humans, a role similar to Ned Beauman's venomous lumpsuckers (2022). This setting draws in all the issues of the present moment as collateral damage: the ill-treatment of women by powerful men, whiplash #metoo, a queen bee, abortifacients ("This allows you to put love first"), excessive lawyering (the matāpule), zombies, ineffectual transactionalism, migration, globalisation, a rejection of isolation, that the future is nomadism ("That there’d been a time before islands, when all was water. That a day would come when the islands slipped back beneath the waves, taking all the drowsy dirt-dwellers with them."). In short, everything is too much excepting technology (just boats, the necessary botanicals and special gifts to individuals descended from the gods) and romantic opportunities.
Many elements of the story evoke Greek mythology; there's a tale told about a journey to Pulotu reminiscent of Orpheus's visit to Hades, and the concept of do-overs was given the same even-handed treatment it received in the MCU, albeit the other way around. I felt the exotic ontology and belief structure was insufficiently explored; life is somehow something extra to Cartesian body and soul, and I wonder if the people of the time considered brains to cause minds, and hearts the same way we do now. What about love? Intriguingly there was no worship, just rank and tapu. The eventual redemption felt unearned.
Johnson obviously did a mountain of research for this book and integrated it very well. However the two-track structure was somewhat flawed: by the time the big events roll around we almost always know their outcomes, and by then the details are not as important or interesting as they would have been earlier in the story. At times it felt we were waiting for the other track to sync up. Moreover Johnson struggled to construct distinct voices for enough of the characters, making it sometimes challenging to remember which track we're on as events converge. The romantic pairings were telegraphed with no subtlety; there's no playing of the field or left swipes, perhaps suggesting sexual egalitarianism or cosmic predestination.
Ian McGuire at the New York Times made enough errors to suggest he skimmed some parts, like the ending which explicitly calls out Kōrero as the titular character. Goodreads e.g. Steven: one for fantasy fans, a "Western story in Polynesian dressing".
