Terra Nullius

Conceptually I really enjoyed this book. Anti-colonial sci-fi is very much my jam, and I can't think of another speculative book offhand told with an aboriginal Australian lens. That said, I think I might have enjoyed it more without the twist which I keyed into from the very beginning. The reveal was a long time coming which made some of the gymnastics done to avoid the reveal a little forced. The cover compares Coleman to LeGuin which I think is particularly apt in that a lot of LeGuin's novels were really narrative thought experiments, more concerned with concept than character, and I think that's true for Coleman as well. It's a very cool idea but the idea supercedes much of my bonding with any characters or their stories. Still, a very interesting book and a genuine, occasionally viscerally painful look at the colonial powers that founded Australia, the US, and too many other countries. Not enough of this book is fiction.

Hmm. It's not really possible to review this book without spoilers, but I will say it is a book of two parts: one an excellent story of life under the horrors of colonialism, and another (the majority) a plot-hole-riven and frustratingly by-the-numbers story. On my generous days, I bump this up to a 3.5 (a 4 for the first third, and a 3 for the rest).

Addressing a blind spot in my Australian author diet which till now consisted of Jane Harper and Liane Moriarty (huge fan of both btw) Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar Aboriginal, a people who have traditionally occupied the south-west corner of Western Australia long before history started being recorded there.

Terra Nullius is the story of Settler arrogance and their disdain for the Natives. Bending them to their language, their rules, their religion only to offer them a life of enslavement. Jacky manages to escape his Settler captors and makes a run for the bush which sets off a chain of events. I loved the mid-story turn but I feel this would have been better served as a short story or novella. The impact slowly trickles away with each subsequent chapter.

This harkens to the Residential schools of Canada, with a light dusting of Nickel Boys and a heap of the Southern Baptist faithful who interpreted the word of God as still allowing for the ownership of slaves and split with their abolitionist church goers in the north.

It seems colonizer narratives are sadly all too familiar regardless of what country you come from.