Witi Ihimaera: Sky Dancer

Reviewed by LAURENCE JENKINS

This is Ihimaera's ninth novel and by far his wildest. With a secure reputation and at the forefront of the literary scene in New Zealand, he has done a brave thing to come out with this book - preposterous, at least outwardly, unwieldy, and aimed at exactly what market is anyone's guess.

It might be attractive to just about all age groups, but I can see it appealing more to a young clientele than to a mature one. No doubt about the Tolkien influence here, and why not, with all the attention being paid yet again to Lord of the Rings? But our Witi is no J.R.R.

That's not a criticism, as Ihimaera has more than proved his mettle in the fantasy fiction genre with the much more serious and gentle The Whale Rider. If he was seeking to follow his own successful model in this book, which has as its heroine another, if older, female sacrificial virgin, he has carried the idea into realms hitherto unimagined. In both books, the idea of male chauvinism is constantly challenged and an incipient feminism drives almost every episode, albeit with simplistic devices.

Using the metaphor of bird life, he weaves into that conceit the entire history of the universe, it would seem, as seen mostly from the Maori perspective.

Hoki and Bella, two ancient bird-like sisters, have as their burden the task of saving the land birds from the territorial ambitions of the sea birds, the manu moana. They live in a valley where from time to time a crack appears in the sky and out of it various and sundry menaces pour, intent on upsetting the world's ecological balance.

Enter Skylark (get it?) who, like the young Kahu in The Whale Rider, is a sort of chosen one-cum-scapegoat to be used as a tool by the old crones in preventing a second coming of a sort, the re-enactment of a long-ago mythological battle to decide ornithological supremacy.

Will the gulls, terns, albatross and all the other sea birds beat the hell out of the hawks, owls, cranes (I sense here a bit of confusing overlap), sparrows and all the other webfootedly-challenged so that they can gobble up all the eels and freshwater fish and give up their salty and bonier diet?

The Webbies lost the first round back in the dawn of history, but Lord Tane, in his cursed fairness, has promised them a rematch in the third year of the third millennium. Why, shut my mouth, that's this year! As the beast, to paraphrase Yeats, slouches towards Manu Valley, Skylark bursts on the scene.

Why, you may ask, does Skylark, a no-nonsense-get-outta-my-face type, buy into this? Well, see, her mother, ex-celeb television weather girl Cora, after nearly running down Hoki and Bella in her car while in a drugged state, manages to set fire to the ancient meeting tree of the manu whenua and needs to be forgiven, but she's conveniently in an induced coma to help her recover from that incendiary binge in which she swallowed enough chemicals to blow all her circuits.

So it's down to Skylark to make up for the old slapper's carelessness (she's soft on mum) and this means agreeing to fulfil the prophecy that she's Hoki and Bella's Chosen One. Had enough? There's more.

The writing in the first half of this substantial novel is not comfortable but, as in former works such as Nights in the Gardens of Spain, once Ihimaera gets into verbal hyperspace, he really floors it, taking risks that would make other, more considered writers quake with trepidation.

In Sky Dancer we are in literal hyperspace, for aeons it seems, and there the narrative is fluid, soaring. Passages describing aerial battles, the trials and tribulations of Skylark and her boyfriend Arnie who have become birds to save the world (and Cora), and the Assumption of the Blessed Hoki into her element beyond the skies, are all unabashedly rhapsodic and unbridled.

It is precisely because of this fearless performance that the novel works. It is a page-turner extraordinaire and graphic enough in its visual imagery to sweep the reader into a belief-suspended excitement that never lets go.

There are lots and lots of timely and cutesy turns of phrase to offset the rather Jacobean language of the birds and of the old women as they read from this or that crusty tome bearing the names of books of the Holy Bible (Revelations, Apocrypha). Skylark and Arnie bicker constantly in that insulting jargon used by contemporary teenagers.

"Get a life" is a recurring utterance, and Skylark's fetishes include badges bearing slogans like: Are these your eyeballs? I found them in my cleavage". Never mind. It isn't a book for posterity, but for quick consumption and, perhaps, planned obsolescence. Just enjoy.

Penguin, $34.95

* Laurence Jenkins is a Northland-based writer, reviewer and arts columnist.