Sally Blundell
Na Viro by Gina Cole (Huia, 2022), 352pp, $35
Tia Grom-Eddy steers the carved kauri drua into the ocean current, the sail billowing and flapping above her. Wind in her face, the blue-black night sky alive with stars, she begins the long journey from Aotearoa along the Kermedec Trench and on, to the Lau archipelago, calling on the ancestral navigation skills that taught her ‘how to keep your body in tune with tides, flows, currents, animals, signs. The ways of her Fijian and Tongan and Mayuro ancestors, always guiding her.’ A few chapters on, Tia is using the same ancient methods of wayfinding to navigate another kind of drua, the Pawta, a huge, rock-like, voice-responsive, extra-terrestrial spaceship built by the inhabitants of far-away Thrae. Aboard the Pawta, she now rides the currents and swells of the mighty Tijen galactic whirlpool, in search of her sister, thought to be trapped in a tiny probe deep in the turbulent vortex. [Read more…]