Nation
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The story takes place on an alternative Earth in the mid-18th century. While Mau is returning from the island where he performed alone his ritual to become a man, a tsunami kills everyone on his own island, while crashing a ship on the same island. The only survivor of the ship is a 13 years old girl, Daphne, who was traveling to rejoin with her father, governor of some British colony. Daphne invites Mau for a tea party in the wreckage of the ship, and eventually become friends and learn each other's languages. Refugees from nearby islands are coming in; Mau learns to be the chief of an island, while Daphne learns the ways of the women in those parts. The voices of the ancestors speak into the heads of the two children, the Grandfathers ordering Mau to restore the altars of the gods which where washed into the sea, while the Grandmothers ask Daphne to open the cave where the bodies of the island's greatest soldiers are burried and free their souls (or something like that). In the cave, the children discover that Mau's ancestors had a wide knowledge of science and technology (they knew about Jupiter and Saturn's satellites and had probably built a telescope) and the legends hint that they had travelled around the world. People on the island live in the fear of the Raiders, cannibals who worship the god of Death. When two mutineers of Daphne's ship, who were thrown out on a small skiff, arrive, they manage to get rid of them and prepare for the coming of the Raiders, who have joined forces with the chief of the mutineers, former first mate Cox. When Cox finally arrives, the islanders frighten the Raiders enough that they accept a duel between Mau and Cox, which Cox looses. Some time later, Daphne's father finally finds his daughter, and is soon joined by another ship, bringing him news that he has become king of England, since an epidemic has killed all of the royal family and plenty of potential heirs. Daphne convices her father not to consider the islanders as savages and to acceed to their demand to become not a part of the Empire, but of the Royal Society of Sciences. One year later, Daphne comes back to the island to bring all the tools the islanders had asked in exchange for the golden door of the Grandfather's cave (8 tons of gold). The world's best scientists are also coming to study the cave and give the islanders lectures about everything.
[ Posté le 23 janvier 2010 à 12:15 | pas de commentaire | lien permanent ]
