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A review by lawbooks600
The First Voyage by Allan Baillie
informative
fast-paced
3.0
Representation: First Australian characters
Score: Six points out of ten.
I saw this book hiding in the historical shelves and after reading a book in the same genre as this (and not enjoying it) I hoped that this would be a better one so I picked it up and finally read it. It was but only by a small margin and because the narrative has so many flaws outweighing the positive aspects I won't consider rereading this. It starts with the main character Bent Beak who doesn't have a last name (the only other book that has a name system like this is the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver) living in what is now Timor-Leste (for some reason the book calls it Timor. Why?) Here's where the flaws surface, I couldn't relate to any of the characters in the novel considering it kills off characters left, right and centre like it's nobody's business. Really? I guess it's an effort to reduce character soup as there were a lot of characters (whose names I forgot for some of them) and it could've been longer since it's less than 200 pages (now don't get me wrong. A book can be under 200 pages and still be outstanding but not every book can pull that off.) The one I read couldn't do so successfully because it left me wanting more out of it than what it offered. But here's the biggest issue, time and time again I must say this statement, the book would be better off if someone parallel to the characters wrote it rather than someone dissimilar to them. The fact that the afterword used the term Aborigine (which is outdated and could mean anything) doesn't sit right with me. If it used a term like Indigenous Australian it would've been a little better. But alas, it used the antiquated term (then again, it was published nine years ago so maybe people would've accepted that? But language can change and some words can fall out of usage.) There.
Score: Six points out of ten.
I saw this book hiding in the historical shelves and after reading a book in the same genre as this (and not enjoying it) I hoped that this would be a better one so I picked it up and finally read it. It was but only by a small margin and because the narrative has so many flaws outweighing the positive aspects I won't consider rereading this. It starts with the main character Bent Beak who doesn't have a last name (the only other book that has a name system like this is the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver) living in what is now Timor-Leste (for some reason the book calls it Timor. Why?) Here's where the flaws surface, I couldn't relate to any of the characters in the novel considering it kills off characters left, right and centre like it's nobody's business. Really? I guess it's an effort to reduce character soup as there were a lot of characters (whose names I forgot for some of them) and it could've been longer since it's less than 200 pages (now don't get me wrong. A book can be under 200 pages and still be outstanding but not every book can pull that off.) The one I read couldn't do so successfully because it left me wanting more out of it than what it offered. But here's the biggest issue, time and time again I must say this statement, the book would be better off if someone parallel to the characters wrote it rather than someone dissimilar to them. The fact that the afterword used the term Aborigine (which is outdated and could mean anything) doesn't sit right with me. If it used a term like Indigenous Australian it would've been a little better. But alas, it used the antiquated term (then again, it was published nine years ago so maybe people would've accepted that? But language can change and some words can fall out of usage.) There.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Death, Blood, and Grief
Trigger warnings: Physical assault and injury, blood, grief and loss depiction, murder, death of a father in the past and other people