Covid-stranded seafarers

 

Because I have sailed with so many Filipino shipmates, I am particularly interested in their stories.

The fellow above has a particularly sad one. He is Wendell Pineda, who works with an engine crew. After his first contract he went home, and spent three weeks in quarantine, but before he could see his wife and two-year-old daughter, his company requested his urgent return to sea. 

(Photograph: Aljon Malanjit/ITF Seafarers’ Trust)

Filipinos can be found in all the seas and every ocean, because they are by far the largest group of seafarers in the world. Most of the hands on container ships and tankers are Filipino.  They are on fishing trawlers, floating oil rigs, cruise ships, and luxury mega-yachts – adding up to perhaps half a million Filipino sailors at sea at any time.  

But, while I have come across hard-working cabin and table stewards from Kiribati and Vanuatu, I was unaware of their stories until I read this article today.

From the Guardian

Among the hundreds of thousands of seafarers left stranded by Covid-19, perhaps none have faced an ordeal as extreme as that of the i-Kiribatis.

Last weekend, after a year-long odyssey across continents – shuttled between foreign nations and locked out of their homeland as waves of coronavirus closed down previously safe routes – that ordeal finally came to an end.

In a palm-fringed courtyard in Tarawa, the capital of the small Pacific island nation of Kiribati, tears and shouts of joy greeted 141 seafarers during an emotional reunion with families they had not seen for almost two years. Temware Iotebwa, 39, said that at first he did not spot his children – his son, Tawati, 15, and daughters Sherlene, 11, Eilene, 6, and three-year-old AyMe – in the crowd. But their shouts quickly drew tears to his eyes.

Iotebwa, an able seaman, had worked a month of a nine-month contract on the Hamburg Süd/Maersk container ship MV Monte Pascoal, when the pandemic was declared. He disembarked in Belgium, before being flown to Fiji.

He and his crewmates have spent the past nine months in limbo, sharing cramped hotel rooms and unable to tell their families when they would see them again.

Of the estimated 1.7 million seafarers worldwide, more than half are from developing countries such as Kiribati, a low-lying nation of 33 islands with one of the lowest standards of living in Oceania and a poor healthcare system. Concerned that it might not be able to cope, Kiribati responded to the pandemic in 2020 by closing its borders. The strategy successfully kept Covid cases at zero.

But for Iotebwa and his fellow i-Kiribati seafarers, it meant a year of hell, caught in the middle of protracted negotiations between the shipping companies, the International Chamber of Shipping and a Kiribati government fearful of the risks of allowing the return of seafarers who may have been exposed to Covid.

Finally, in April 2021, after months of talks, the Kiribati government agreed to repatriate the seafarers, who would first be quarantined in Fiji. But then Fiji saw a sudden spike in coronavirus cases and the Kiribati government reversed its policy. After allowing about 60 seafarers back into the country, the authorities closed the border again, with no exceptions.

Iotebwa had just been told he was about to be flying home when it happened. It was his lowest moment, he says.

“My excitement turned to hopelessness when I heard the news,” he says over a video link from Tarawa. “The waiting time turned from days to months. My kids missed me very much and I missed them.”

His family were worried too; the Grand Melanesian Hotel in the Fijian town of Nadi, paid for by the shipping company, was overcrowded and uncomfortable with no privacy.

“It felt like a prison,” he says. “My wife, Takentemwanoku Matiota Iotebwa, constantly reminded me to be careful and to stay away from people to avoid getting infected. She was very worried.”

They kept their spirits up by playing games of croquet and tug-of-war in the lobby.

He is happy now he is back at home, but there is sadness, too. One of his friends lost his father, another his wife. Marriages broke up under the strain of waiting and the ordeal has taken a financial toll on the families. The seafarers are often their families’ main breadwinners and a source of remittances. They stopped being paid in early 2021, and now worry about their employment prospects with borders remaining closed.

“I don’t blame anyone because this pandemic can happen anytime and anywhere,” says Iotebwa. “But if my government was smart, it could have found other ways to bring us seafarers home sooner. Other poorer countries arranged their seafarers’ return immediately while still on lockdown.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) held a crisis meeting this month with transport organisations “as a matter of urgency” to protect the rights of those working at sea. Seafarers provided remittances to 12% of households in Kiribati in 2010, and the sector is an important source of employment.

Pastor Matthias Ristau, a chaplain at the German Seamen’s Mission, helped care for 150 of i-Kiribati’s seafaring community who were stuck in a youth hostel in Hamburg for months before being flown to Fiji. “I could see these were really tough guys but after so many months at sea they were already exhausted,” he says.

“And all the time hearing about families breaking, marriages splitting … I know it will take them a long time to finally arrive at home mentally.” Natalie Shaw, director of employment affairs at the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), says the plight of the i-Kiribati is the biggest challenge she has faced in 18 years – including piracy.

POWER OF THE DOG

 

The Power of the Dog was in local cinemas for a few days.  Friends who went to see it have come back bemused, all very curious to know what I might think of it.  So this is my answer to them.

There are good reasons for seeing it.  It has had rave reviews from all the important critics.  And, while the story is set in Montana, it was actually filmed in New Zealand.  During the pandemic, what's more.  It was more exciting knowing that Benedict Cumberbatch was stranded in our country, than knowing that Google billionaire Larry Page was here, believe me.

As I have poor eyesight, and dread being trapped in a dark cinema, I was happy to wait for Netflix.  And that was lucky, because I found I could watch this film for only short spells at a time.  Nothing to do with my sight; just that I found it slow and, at times, grueling.

The cinematography is amazing.  Astounding.  Yes, I do know that our country is photogenic, but the lingering shots were stunning.  Beautifully composed and shot. 

The acting was equally great.  Benedict C turned in a truly compelling performance as the main actor, and the other three major characters were excellent.

But the story did not seem to merit the huge talents employed in making the film.  In a nutshell, it is about a cowhand struggling with his homosexuality, and taking it out on anyone and anything within yelling range.  Including his poor horse.  When he called her a bitch and whipped her, it was very hard to take.

The people around this foul-tempered cowhand suffered, too, even if they were simply in the same room.  This brought back a bad memory. Quite some years ago, Ron and I were in a restaurant in Sacramento, CA, where there was a table of men -- some kind of stag do -- where one of the men was in a black rage.  Waitress after waitress was reduced to tears, and everyone at the other tables, including ourselves, felt the brunt of it, too.  There is a very similar scene at the start of this movie, which did not make me feel any sympathy for the cowhand, at all.  So, for me, it was a bad beginning.

From then on, the black rage (pictured rather too compellingly by the very, very gifted Benedict C) was turned on (a) the horse (b) the cowhand's brother's new wife, who is reduced to a quivering alcoholic, and (c) the new wife's son -- who wreaks revenge for the bullying (though he is probably homosexual himself), by murdering the cowhand in a peculiarly scientific fashion, as an objective study in medicine.

It is perhaps one of the cruelest ways possible of popping someone off.   Cruelty, in fact, is the motif of the story.

Go to see it, if you enjoy wonderful camera work and outstanding acting. But be prepared to be repelled.

Tough settling in New Zealand

 

Today, in New Zealand's internet news site, Stuff, plus print features in various newspapers:

Maori are the inheritors of an impressive maritime tradition.  Their remote ancestors were skilled sailors who burst into the western Pacific from southeast Asia over 3,000 years ago, to settle the islands of Fiji.  About a thousand years before Christ, they colonized Tonga and Samoa, where Polynesian language and culture developed.  From there, men and women sailed out from this ancestral cradle, fanning out across the broad Pacific, and exploring more of the earth’s surface than anyone ever before. 

This amazing feat was made possible by their evolution of the double-hulled canoe into a stable voyaging vessel, capable of freighting plants, animals, provisions, as well as people.  The big, graceful craft ranged as far east as Rapanui (Easter Island), and probably made a landfall in South America, either introducing the kumara, or carrying kumara sprouts back. 

At a time when sailors in the Mediterranean were experimenting with the fore-and-aft sail, Polynesian canoes powered by lateens made the tough 4000 km voyage from the Tahitian archipelago to Hawaii, and then back again, battling cross-currents, the doldrums, and contrary trade winds.  And two hundred years before the era of Columbus, Magellan, and Drake, Polynesians crossed 2000 miles of storm-tossed ocean to the mountainous, deeply embayed islands of Aotearoa-New Zealand.

Their navigational science was astounding. Not only were they familiar with the patterns of currents, clouds and swells, and the migrations of birds, fish and whales, but they had a truly impressive knowledge of star bearings.  Great directional stars and constellations—Matariki (the Pleiades), Whetū-kura (Aldebaran), Rehua (Antares), and Te matau o Maui (the hook of Scorpio)—were as familiar to Polynesian navigators and priests as the faces of their kin.  Centuries before the crew on Coumbus’s ship shivered at the prospect of falling off the edge of the world, Polynesians knew perfectly well that the earth is round.

The ancestors were also adept at the science of acclimatisation.   It was an intrinsic part of their successful settlement of the Pacific, and involved plants and animals from as far away as New Guinea.  This was because the islands they found, though fertile, were barren. In Tahiti, for instance, there were only two edible plants — a kind of borage, and coconut. Undeterred, they introduced taro, kava, breadfruit, paper mulberry for tapa, pigs, chickens, dogs, bananas. It is almost impossible to imagine what today’s tropical paradises would have looked like without Polynesian horticultural brilliance.

 They applied the same system to Aotearoa-New Zealand.  But this land was colder, heavily forested, the soil not as fertile.  Some of the cargo was lost right away.  The pigs and chickens either did not survive the voyage, or died soon after landing, and bananas, breadfruit, and coconuts failed to thrive.  There were still dogs and rats—though the rats might have been stowaways, it was possible to eat them.  Carefully nurtured sprouts of taro, yams, gourds, kumara, and paper mulberry acclimatized after a fashion, along with the Pacific ti cabbage tree with its sugary root.  But the challenge was enormous.

While the settlers were learned in the spheres of astronomy, navigation, botany, zoology, medicine, and the social sciences, big gaps in their knowledge were suddenly important.  They did not have chemistry, geology, physics, or metallurgy, for instance. That those pioneers produced a flourishing society despite these gaps is an achievement that should never be underrated.

 

DRAGONS AND RIDDLES

 

I love dragons (and collect them) and I love riddles.  The plot of my first novel, Abigail (A Love of Adventure) revolves about a riddle.

So how could I help but be charmed by pirate lady Cindy Vallar's Rumble the Dragon?

Here is an alluring excerpt:

Deep within the bowels of Cymru two caves combined to create an immense cauldron-like chamber. Striated walls ebbed and flowed into peaks and valleys like waves crashing onto the shore. The higher the walls rose, the narrower they became until shrouds of darkness concealed the ceiling. At the far end of the cauldron, a frozen river of gray, brown, and green cascaded onto a polished floor. Two alabaster pillars guarded a domed rock upon which sat an ancient and enormous dragon with graying whiskers. Age had faded the emerald green, burnished gold, and umber brown of Dragon Father’s scales, but time had failed to obscure his regal bearing or dim his keen sight.

On a tiered platform across from him sat the members of his Council. A few emitted occasional low growls, as if angered, while others uttered high-pitched whistles to show their delight. Lacking the patience of their leader, nearly all the young dragons flapped their wings, pushed and shoved each other, or shifted their weight from one foreleg to the other. With a flick of his claws and a glare through narrowed eyes, Dragon Father silenced them until they perched like stone statues.

Once every half century, he summoned dragons from the farthest reaches of the world to a confabulation. The preponderance were Great Earth Dragons, but the lesser dragons came in all shapes and sizes. Mud-caked, timid Knuckers lingered near the fringes of the gathering. Farther from the center and even shier than their cousins, the Bucca bumped around in the shadows. Chirping, mischievous Dwarf Dragons darted over and around the cauldron, annoying one and all. Moth Dragons, with furry manes and razor-sharp teeth, nestled in the clefts away from the light. Black-striped Tazzy Dragons warbled from pillars or stalagmites, while their young peered out from pouches on their parents’ backs.

Dragon Father unleashed a mighty roar that rocked the chamber. The jabber ceased and from smallest to largest, everyone focused their attention on the king of all earth dragons. A blur of shimmering peacock blue popped up from amid the Council, swooped over their heads, and plopped down on the shelf in front of them. Dragon Father lowered his large head, stretched his neck across the open space, and peered through hooded eyes at the adolescent Earth Dragon, who straightened his spine and smiled.

Expelling a puff of white smoke, Dragon Father asked, “Es vos promptus?”

With the claws of his right front leg curled over his left, the small Earth Dragon bowed his head. Eager to show his comprehension of Latin, Gwalchmai said, “Yes, Dragon Father, I am ready.”

The instant Dragon Father resumed his perch, Gwalchmai lifted his peacock blue head, while the green and gold scales on his tail glittered as it curled and uncurled with anticipation. This was the final night of the confabulation. Previous evenings had been devoted to poetry and music, magic and masquerades. But tonight a unique competition of riddles and conundrums would test the dragons’ mental prowess against Myrddin, a wizard with respect for nature and dragons.

“Kee, kee, kee.” The bird’s high-pitched call reverberated through the cauldron. A bluish-silver falcon, with reddish-brown spots on its white breast, glided to the open floor directly between Dragon Father and his Council. When the falcon settled on the polished stones, it transformed into an old man. A brimless leather cap crowned his head, and his white beard, speckled reddish brown, flowed over his blue-gray robe almost to his knees. He opened his hand to reveal a radiant star ruby the color of blood with a tinge of blue, which he offered to Dragon Father. “A gift.”

Dragon Father plucked the giant ruby from the wizard’s hand. “It is a rare beauty and a gem I shall treasure. Thank you, Myrddin.” After adding it to the hoard, he clasped his front paws under his chin and asked, “Are you ready for my riddle?”

The wizard nodded, then tilted his head and placed a finger on his cheekbone as three others curled at his chin.

In a dulcet voice, Dragon Father posed his conundrum.

“It is cold and it is hot
“It is white and it is dark
“It is stone and it is wax
“Its true nature is of flesh
“And its color is red.”

Mryddin absently stroked his whiskers as he mumbled the riddle over and over. He alternated between pinching the top of his nose and rubbing his chin. He walked in a circle with the sleekness of a cat. Once or twice he looked about to speak, then shook his head and resumed his contemplation.

“What is it, Myrddin?” Although whispered, Dragon Father’s question reverberated through the grotto.

The wizard tugged the sleeves of his robe. His lips twitched into a confident smile. “A man’s heart.”

Gurgles, howls, and squawks greeted the answer. Gwalchmai’s eyes grew round and his jaw dropped.

“You are right, Myrddin.” Dragon Father sat back on his haunches. His right paw curled over the stalagmite that served as an armrest to his throne. He extended his left foreleg toward the wizard. “To guess correctly deserves a prize, and so, I bestow upon thee the singular title of Lord of the Dragon.”

Myrddin bowed. “I am most honored, Dragon Father.”

“And have you a riddle for us, my lord?”

The shrewd wielder of magic nodded. He rotated in a slow circle so all heard his puzzle.

“I am only one color, but not one size.
“I am stuck at the bottom, yet easily fly.
“I am present in sun, but hidden in rain.
“I do no harm, and feel no pain.
“What am I?”

I know! I know! Gwalchmai yearned to share the answer, but it would be rude to blurt out the solution before the older and wiser dragons. He tapped his foot, scowled, crossed and uncrossed his forelegs, but not a single dragon spoke. Gwalchmai puffed out a loud breath.

Myrddin whirled round and pointed at Gwalchmai, who gulped under the gaze of hundreds of eyes. He hated being the center of attention and tried to withdraw into the midst of the Council, but the taller dragons closed ranks against his retreat and seemed to push him forward until he tumbled from the shelf into the center of the floor. A ray of sunlight peeked through the smoke hole illuminating him for all to see.

“Do you know the answer to the Lord of the Dragon’s riddle?” Dragon Father asked.

“Ye . . . yes.” The word sounded more like a mouse’s squeak than a dragon’s roar. Gwalchmai cleared his throat. “He speaks of a shadow.”

“You are right,” Myrddin said. Well done, Gwalchmai! Your mind is as sharp as the sight of the bird for which you are named.

Gwalchmai squeezed shut his eyes and trembled. How did the wizard know his true name – a name only he and Dragon Father knew? With such knowledge Myrddin had the power to control him. The rapid beating of his heart drowned out the barks, growls, and warbles of the other dragons. When Dragon Father spoke, a heavy feeling settled in Gwalchmai’s stomach, as if he had swallowed stones that weighted him down.

“You are indeed wise, Myrrdin. You stumped all but one of us, and for that I grant you one boon. What shall it be?”

Still pointing to Gwalchmai, the wizard said, “Allow this dragon to come with me.”

Dragon Father conferred with his Council. Beads of sweat dripped from Gwalchmai’s brow. His tail quivered. He belonged here with Dragon Father, not out in the world where some men paid others to hunt dragons.

After Dragon Father resumed his perch upon the domed rock, he said, “The request is unusual, but granted. He may stay with you, Lord of the Dragon, until I call for him.”

Myrrdin bowed. “Thank you, Dragon Father.”

Want to buy the book?  Of course!  Buy an autographed copy here

And Abigail's riddle? It is the clue to a treasure trove.  See if you can solve it.

With sugar and rice and apples I'm nice
Although I am wood, I taste very good
When I am high, all sails fly
When I am low, search for a blow.  What am I?

Christmas Eve in Aotearoa New Zealand

 

PUBLISHING YOUR BOOK IN PRINT

 

It's a conundrum.  Which to choose when publishing your book?  

There are many choices with producing a digital book.  Amazon, obviously, is the biggie.  Their publishing arm is KDP.  You produce a single page-sized jacket converted to pdf, and then upload your manuscript as a word document.  If you want details, my blog Publishing Your Novel on Kindle has been a standby for many since I put it up a bunch of years ago. 

I've had many, many thank you notes and comments since then.  About a thousand, last counting. People have found it very useful, which is terrific.

Not much has changed since then.  It is still possible to design your jacket on powerpoint, though you get better text definition with adobe.  But powerpoint is a lot, lot easier.

As for the interior, don't bother with adobe. A good word manuscript is best.

With KDP it is easy.  With Draft 2 Digital  it is very easy, too, and you get a prettier book, as they offer all kinds of fancy embellishments.  So I always go for both.

The hard part is the paperback (or hardback, if you are really ambitious).

The two big platforms are Amazon's KDP and Ingram Spark, an umbrella that includes Lightning Source. And so, with Daughters of the Storm, I looked at both.

There is plenty on the internet if you want to compare the price and pricing structures.  

I recommend OldMateMedia  and the Alliance of Independent Authors' Watchdog. The second is somewhat out of date, as CreateSpace, alas, is no more, being taken over by Amazon's KDP, but the tips are still good.

The conclusion I came to was to use both.  Amazon is great for selling KDP books on the labyrinthine Amazon site, and even seems to give preferential billing to books that are published with them.  But they are not as good at selling print books as they are with digital, in my experience, which goes against the statistics of the bookselling market, where eBooks have never surpassed 25% of sales.  You can opt for extended distribution, but the financial return is not very good.

With Ingram, on the other hand, you have the chance of getting your book into actual stores.  By paying $150 you get it listed in their catalogue, so while the stores might not actually stock the book, they can find it easily if a customer asks for it.  And the author's cut for international print book sales is definitely better than Amazon's.

But how hard do they make it to publish your print book?

The robots at KDP are very, very picky. With the text, you have to watch the page breaks, as blank pages will slip in if you are not very careful.  The formatting problem seems worse with a pdf manuscript, and I found it was best to upload a good word document.  And it has to be good.  Investing in the new Microsoft 365 turned out to be a must.  It's expensive, but can be shared with five other authors.

Creating the cover is truly awful.  KDP have a so-called Cover Creator which has six designs to choose as a template.  All are terrible, in my honest opinion.  The back is cluttered, and the front has badly placed text.  But you might like it, so go ahead if you do.  But I warn you that glitches are so frequent that it feels as if they are embedded.  It is much better to download a template with nothing but guidelines, so you can create your own. Fill in the boxes with the trim size of your book, and the number of pages, and then have fun with your images and text.

Luckily, KDP does not charge for changes, because that message that your book needs further attention will come up often.  The problem is the spine.  The title of the book, and the author's name have to be within a strict parameter, so that if you add a little image, a glyph, or a colophon, it has to be ridiculously tiny.

And then, when I ordered proof copies, the damn spine did not look right.  It bled over to the front.  Grr.  

Ingram has a template generator.  You have to subscribe, which is free, and you also have to have an ISBN.  When you explore their site you can find a free one, so try that, if you don't have your own ISBN ready. But when you have filled in all the boxes on their template generator page, they will send you a free template for your cover.  Open it on adobe, save, and work away.  Be careful to save every change under a different name, so that you keep a record.  And it also pays to cut out the ISBN on the template, save it as a jpeg, and crop off the pink and blue surround.  Then you will have it ready to insert after you have done everything else.

Your interior has to be a high-quality pdf. Their website has plenty of tips, and the community is also very helpful.  Which is lucky, as the robots -- and the people -- are very picky indeed.  And every time you change, it costs, so it pays to get it right from the very beginning.

First, you start with your word document, complete with front matter, back matter, copyright page, list of previous publications, any acknowledgements, a table of contents if you use one, maps, images, and author biography.  

Then you convert it to pdf by PRINTING to adobe.  Don't use the "convert to pdf" option in save, as it does not work.  You hit "print" and choose "adobe" and you alter the properties from standard to PDF/x-1a2001.  

Don't worry about page size.  Because once you have your interior as a pdf, you have to crop every page to your trim size. KDP do that for you, whether you submit a word doc (recommended for them) or pdf.  But Ingram does not.

If you have trouble, the community helps a lot, and I also found that the staff in Australia were very proactive, maybe because Ingram has only recently set up there, and it is all new and shiny.

The cover needs a lot of care.  There is the same pickiness with the content of the spine as there is with KDP.  So keep your title and author's name well within the guidelines, and be very particular with any small image or colophon you might add.

So, what is the result of all this hard work?

KDP, remember, is free.  But the return for extended distribution is small.  And KDP is very mean about passing on royalties in any currency save the US.  With every market, your royalty has to be more than $100 US for you to be paid.

This does not happen with Ingram.  Daughters of the Storm is the third book I have published with them, the others being The Discovery of Tahiti and Tupaia, and I have been very happy with both their reporting and their payments. There is that upfront $49 US plus $150 if you want to get into their catalogue, but I covered the costs quickly.

Quality of the product.  Ingram wins hands down.  The book looks and feels great.  The paper quality is wonderful, and the jacket is very slick indeed.  The KDP product is second-rate, when the two are compared.  

But I guess you get what you pay for.
 

LOVE PUNS?

 

STARKERS AND NERVOUS

 

Another Nordic Noir

CASE 

In my chase of Nordic chiller mysteries, "Case" was a natural choice, as "Trapped" was brilliant, and I wanted to know if all the Icelandic stuff was as good.

And this is definitely up there with it. "Case" has all the great cinematography, sound track, and writing that I found so compelling with "Trapped".  There are even some of the same actors.

And the acting is as brilliant.  The cast look natural (no Hollywood glamorization). They act like natural people; they even talk like natural people, though the words are in Icelandic. Gabriela, the lead detective, is so aunt-like that you expect her to smell of freshly baked scones.  Her hair is lank, her face is scarcely made up, and her clothes do nothing to hide a few extra kilos.  When the mystery gets grueling, you want to go up to her and give her a reassuring hug.

So, why my headline -- "starkers and nervous"?  Because the producers wanted to show the viewer exactly what happened, and this is a story about the deliberate sexual degradation of 14-year-old girls.  Accordingly, there is a graphic scene in a brothel where the totally naked manager is being cross-examined, and is so nervous that he fiddles with himself while he hunts for plausible answers. 

Behind him, naked couples are copulating.  In most American and British dramas, this would be offensive, but here it is dramatic and telling.  Not offensive at all -- but get ready for it.  Once you are immersed in the story, it is easy to understand that the scene is necessary to the plot, just as the writers intended, and the sex and nudity are not gratuitous at all.

Only one character is a stereotype -- Logi, the washed up lawyer in Paul Newman style, who operates on booze and blunders horribly in his hunt for the truth -- but he is so well portrayed that this is eminently forgivable.  And Logi definitely does the right thing in the end, even though he is mad enough to break the law.  By doing this, he foils Gabriela, who is close to the truth herself, but her enigmatic little smile at the very end reveals what she really thinks, deep inside.  

Okay, the plot. But no spoilers. A very young ballet dancer commits suicide in a Reykjavik theatre -- an interesting choice, as though it is definitely suicide, and not a murder, it looks like a public plea to the police to investigate her motive for ending her life.

And that is exactly what Gabriela -- and Logi -- set out to do.  They follow a tortuous trail that leads to a mess of corruption and depravity that lies under the surface of an apparently very virtuous city.  Teenagers are evasive, and keep changing their stories, the depths of the Dark Web are plumbed, and unexpected villains are exposed.  

As in "Trapped", it is easy to get lost in the labyrinthine story, and wonder what the devil is happening.  Which makes it even more watchable, because you know exactly how Gabriela and Logi are feeling, and why they do what they do.    

IN THE NICK OF TIME

 

From Stuff

The National Library has halted plans to export 600,000 books to an overseas-based online archive after sustained criticism from authors, publishers, copyright holders and the National Party.

In an emailed statement on Monday, the library said it was “reconsidering” plans to ship the books from its Overseas Published Collections “in light of concerns raised by interested parties, including issues associated with copyright”.

The Internet Archive, where it was originally planning to send the books, is embroiled in a copyright infringement lawsuit with publishing giants Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House and Wiley in the United States.

In Monday’s statement, the library said it would not export any books until it considered its next steps.

National Librarian Te Pouhuaki​ Rachel Esson said the library listened to people’s views and was working hard to support New Zealanders’ ongoing access to books from the collections, which it previously argued it had no space for and were scarcely issued by the public.

“We are aiming to balance our duty to all New Zealanders with the concerns of our valued book sector colleagues and will continue to build relationships with them,” she said.

“We are taking some time to look at all available options that align with our collection plans, while preserving author and publisher interests.”

Esson said the library would continue to work to avoid secure destruction of the books, which was looking like an earlier outcome before the deal with the Internet Archive was struck.

The pause comes after the Authors’ Society, Publishers’ Association and Copyright Licensing wrote to the Attorney-General and Ministry for Culture and Heritage, asking them to investigate the deal. Many of those parties felt unheard and upset during the process of what to do with the books, which ended in the library striking a deal with the archive.

Recently there was a protest at a Wellington church over the saga, and National’s arts spokesman Simon O’Connor also publicly commented the deal was “a slap in the face” to New Zealand’s literary community.

There was an original deadline for authors and copyright holders to “opt out” of the library donating their books to the Internet Archive by December 1.

Authors’ Society chief executive Jenny Nagle said it welcomed the decision, and that its concerns around copyright were heard. “We will be pleased to engage in the new year as they look for a legal solution. The National Library and the local writing and publishing industry should not be at odds, as we are all part of the same ecosystem.”

Protest organiser Bill Direen called it a “ceasefire”, while Book Guardians Aotearoa spokesman Michael Pringle, who has also been opposed to the deal, wondered whether legal advice made the library change its mind “at the eleventh hour”.

There would have been “considerable” cost in staff time organising the deal, Pringle said, but no money was given to the Internet Archive, Esson confirmed in a phone interview.

Pringle wanted to see sufficient storage funded for the library to house the books, and for more books to be made available on a reference basis.

Research.  That is what is important.  Up until now the thrust of the protest is the threat to authors' copyright, but historians see the issue rather differently.  I know I would never have been able to research the background for my Wiki Coffin novels, or my books about women at sea, and books about whaling under sail, without the fund of material that I located in the distant stacks of the National Library of New Zealand.

DAUGHTERS OF THE STORM

 PROUDLY PUBLISHED BY OLD SALT PRESS

A raging hurricane. A tiny fishing village in a distant land. A London nightclub dancer stumbles into the local clinic with the famous fire-fighter who carried her to New Zealand. The wife of an American shipping tycoon is on board his new luxury yacht as it battles the storm to reach the village. The young wife of a wine-maker struggles through mud, wind and rain to call for help, as her husband has been mortally hurt.

All three women are in labor.

All three women give birth to baby girls. The clinic is destroyed by the storm, so no records survive. No one knows which baby belongs to which mother.

Twenty-one years later, the American billionaire kidnaps all three young women, along with the men who were there when they were born, and takes them to sea on his yacht, convinced that his wife claimed the wrong baby. He is determined to find which girl is really his daughter.

But the mega-yacht is old, and breaks down easily. As the strange voyage progresses through tropical Polynesia to New Zealand, crisis after crisis overtakes them. They are being stalked by an enigmatic sailing ship. Storms arrive and the engines give out. Reefs and shoals threaten.

There’s not just a question of identity at stake, but of survival, too.

A totally new genre for me, but definitely set at sea.

Available from Amazon, and all good bookstores.

TUPAIA

 

My biography of the great Polynesian navigator, priest, and diplomat, TUPAIA, has been out for a while now, and has gone into several editions.  The cover of the Chinese language edition, published in Taiwan, is shown above.

But somehow, in the interval, I missed a number of reviews, probably because I was at sea. 

Or whatever.

So it was a big surprise when I finally got around to checking Goodreads (mainly because I am trying to set up a page for my new novel, Daughters of the Storm) to find a review of Tupaia by "Alison", who must be one of the most thoughtful reviewers I have had the privilege to read.

And here it is:

I expected this book to tell an important story, but I hadn't expected it to be this enjoyable to read, honestly. It stands as one of the most engaging accounts of Cook's voyages I've read (and I've read a few) even without its most important achievements - allowing space for a Tahitian viewpoint alongside the British, and celebrating the incredible life of one of the most important figures in early European-First Peoples engagement in the Pacific.

Druett's research delved deeply into both ship logs and journals, and also into Polynesian history and culture, she has then drawn all this together into a trustworthy, detailed and intriguing biography of a brilliant, prickly, and hugely influential figure in Tupaia. Along the way, she draws striking portraits almost in passing of both Cook and Banks, as well as Tahitian leader Purea. This process never feels like work for the reader, belying the considerable scholarship that underpins the book.

By alternating viewpoints between the British and the Polynesians, the book highlights the many, many misunderstandings, the groping towards communication, that constituted "first contact". Although this is the first encounter with a radically different culture for both the Polynesians and the British/French, it is notable how much faster the Polynesians catch on to that reality - that this group of people have a different set of *values* - than the Europeans do. It isn't that the Brits don't understand that the laws and customs are different, but rather that they judge these by their own standard - so 'theft' of items is 'mischievous', and they assume that land is for a ruler to exchange. This dismissiveness of other cultures leads to the worst, avoidable, massacres.

One of the most revealing part of the book is the encounter between the Guugu Yimithirr of FNQ and Cook's crew. Tupaia has no cultural or linguistic advantages over the British here, as this is a culture far removed from Polynesia. However, he is still the figure to establish friendly relations. He achieves this feat by, putting his weapons down, and, sitting down to talk. This simple act - to sit - is not something that the Europeans have tried in any of the many voyages to date (after this, observing the success, Cook tries it a lot). It seems inconceivable, really, that such a simple act was such an innovation. But underpinning it is a totally different approach to the encounter than the British brought. To sit, invites listening, settling in, an offer of time without immediate objective.

You see this refusal to listen in a number of the British actions. Particularly the worn tactic of *kidnapping* people to, essentially, make them listen. The fact that Cook (and later in Botany Bay, the First Fleet) decide to kidnap locals in order to show them the benevolence of the British is a direct result of assuming that what you are offering is the only thing worth talking about, not what is already there. The once exposed to your worldview, goods, and customs, people will automatically want them, irrespective of what they already have (which you are totally uninterested in).

And the British (and the other Europeans) were there to achieve objectives - to take resources, including land, by negotiation, purchase or force. Such an objective carries so many assumptions within it - particularly about property - that true cultural exchange was never going to occur.

One of the greatest myths of European arrival in the Pacific and Australasia, is that the boats were the most exciting thing that Polynesian and Aboriginal peoples had seen. In reality, as this book amply demonstrates, these events were viewed in terms of their local worlds - particularly, as to how the arrivals could be turned to advantage in local politics and warfare. The host peoples weren't living static or unchanging lives, just because their cultures were long-lived. Rather, they were complex and often tense societies, engaged in the same process of shifting power balances and changing environmental conditions that mark all peoples.

In granting complexity to the Tahitian culture, and in examining how this shapes Tupaia's choices, Druett also grants the same complexity to the British. She delves into the complex set of pressures upon Cook, and also his crew, taking into account how class and hierarchy constructions in British society also shape their choices. If to some extent Banks and Cook emerge with their usual stereotypes - Banks as a brilliant polymath rich kid, carelessly wielding his financial power to get exactly what he wants, Cook as a driven working-class escapee, a true believer in military hierarchy, especially equally applied, brutal discipline, with a brilliance single-mindedly directed to charting territory - it is because truth is not always new revelation. And you can see how both men's flaws hamper Tupaia's legacy - Cook's resolute focus leads him to disregard a very different kind of navigational brilliance, and his dislike of aristocratic polymaths doesn't endear Tupaia to him at all - Banks, on the other hand, whose intellect and class background are so similar to Tupaia, is clearly not fond of rivals, but also is far too careless to provide either the sponsorship or engagement needed to fully appreciate Tupaia, or even to keep him alive.

My only real criticism of the book is that at times, the author, allows her frustration with Cook to colour the text. An example is the near-obsession with the role of scurvy in killing Tupaia. it is understandable that Druett is infuriated with Cook's attempts to downplay the role in scurvy, but honestly, it seems a minor point in the history to me. A far bigger tragedy is the blindness of both Cook and Banks to how many times Tupaia had saved their butts, and how much they could have learned by taking him more seriously.

But again, in reading detailed accounts, it is always easy to lose the forest for the trees, or the war for the battle. These journeys, no matter what the personalities of the crew and scientists aboard, were always to end in tragedy. Because they were ultimately intended to conquer, to impose European ideals of property and monarchy on the populations in order to exploit and obtain resources. The kind of world in which first encounters were mutual respectful exchanges - first encounters which peoples had managed for millenia, no doubt - were not going to happen under these circumstances. It isn't the number of times Cook lost his temper that was the problem, it was why he was there at all.

THE CHESTNUT MAN

 

ONE HUNDRED PERCENT APPROVAL ON ROTTEN TOMATOES???

Surely not!  Rotten Tomatoes collects all published reviews and rates a film accordingly.  And 100% is unheard-of.  But in this case I was willing to believe, because I had already watched a couple of episodes of this series, and was utterly hooked.

It was the next stage in my ongoing exploration of Nordic Noir.  I started with Trapped, set in Iceland, and compelling, moved onto Finland with Bordertown (very interesting actors, worth following), and arrived in Denmark with a very new series, released just a couple of weeks ago.

It is called THE CHESTNUT MAN.

It is gory.  It is super-tense.  And yes, it is in Danish (though I was surprised how many English words have strayed into that language) but the subtitling is fine.  And it is so, so watchable. The cinematography is superb, owing a lot to Alfred Hitchcock, but with a very modern polish, including aerial shots from drones. And the soundtrack is riveting -- again in the Hitchcock mode, with creaking boards and ominous bird calls, but so very up to date.  The composer is named -- wait for it! -- Andersen.  Kristian Eidnes Andersen.  

Stunning stuff, all of it.  Had me out of my seat with the building tension.

So what else does it owe to classic police dramas?  Such as the everlastingly popular Midsomer Murders, for instance. There is the same kind of Halloween theme, but there are no chocolate-box villages, or loveable eccentrics.  Like the other Nordics, it is not an advertisement for the country of origin.  It is also a lot more credible, and much more focused on the unfolding plot.  All those involved in this series have a story to tell, and tell it remarkably well.  Not that there aren't stray moments that are not necessary and yet so telling.  One, where the father who is hunting for his lost daughter knocks on doors to plead for clues, and is told he is knocking on the same doors and asking the same questions of the same people every day, is just so touching.

The acting throughout is superb, even from the extras who stroll into screen for just a few moments.  The two starring detectives manage to be human, flawed, and yet very likeable.  One is certainly rooting for them at the end. And there is the ultimate target in this serial killing, a Children's Affairs Minister with a very dark history, extremely well done by the actress.

I have never known nail-biting tension on the scale of the last two episodes of this brilliant series.  And here comes a confession.  It gets so nervewracking that I had to watch it by daylight!  And in bits, to take a breather while I did some housework, to calm my racing heart.  The ending is violent, and absolutely perfect.  All the loose ends are tidied up, with just a hint that we might see the two detectives working together in another series.

Please don't look it up on Wikipedia.  Every episode is described in detail, meaning  that it is just one long spoiler.  And it is not knowing how it will turn out that makes the story so great.  There are just six episodes, and I append the list of the cast, just to spare you from ruining an amazing experience by looking up the entry.

Genre	Police procedural Drama
Created by	Dorte Warnøe Hagh David Sandreuter Mikkel Serup
Based on	The Chestnut Man (Kastanjemanden) by Søren Sveistrup
Developed by	Nina Quist Marie Louise Siim
Directed by	Kasper Barfoed Mikkel Serup
Starring	Danica Curcic Mikkel Boe Følsgaard David Dencik Esben Dalsgaard Andersen Iben Dorner Lars Ranthe Liva Forsberg Louis Næss-Schmidt Ali Kazim
Composer	Kristian Eidnes Andersen
Country of origin	Denmark
Original language	Danish
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	6
Production
Executive producers	Søren Sveistrup Meta Louise Foldager Sørensen Mikkel Serup
Producers	Morten Kjems Hytten Juhl Stine Meldgaard Madsen
Production locations	Copenhagen, Denmark
Cinematography	Sine Vadstrup Brooker Louise McLaughlin
Editors	Cathrine Ambus Anja Farsig Martin Schade Lars Therkelsen
Running time	52–59 minutes
Production company