Terra Nullius

2.5 stars. This was just very much not for me. I understood why the story was told the way it was and the whole point was to make me uncomfortable, but it was too much. I was cringing a lot because it felt racist, and again that was the point, but it wasn't a very satisfying story either.

The next war will be about resilience and survival, culture and art. When that war begins you will discover you are not well-armed. You have no art, your stories have no power.” This just didn't work for me. I feel like the entire first half hinges on surprising you with a plot twist which wasn't surprising to me because I realised what was going on early, and it just didn't have a writing style that drew me into the story. That said, I did like the parallels Coleman drew between her story and the colonisation of Australia. I also thought the influence of other media such as The Rabbit-Proof Fence or Benang was obvious, but in a way, I found interesting and enjoyable in its homage. I don't think this is a bad book, it just didn't work for me. But if you like science-fiction and you're looking to read more books by Aboriginal Australian's (Coleman is Wirlomin-Noongar) than maybe consider this. I definitely think this could be a great book for people who don't know much about the colonisation of Australia or the government treatment and policies toward First Nations Australians

This book is timeless. It's the past, present, and future of not only Australia but all colonized lands. Everything about it is a very necessary gut punch.

This one was quite hard to get into, but it is worth the effort because of the twist that shifts the reader’s perspective, but mainly because of the important message the author wants to convey.

3.5*... I think. Months down the line (Nov 2018) I can say that I wanted to enjoy this book more than I did, and in a way that's a problem for me as I don't think that stories of extreme oppression of various groups of people are to be enjoyed so much as to be learnt from. I appreciated the twist of this tale and the tightness of the writing, but I have to admit to not feeling in tune with any of the characters, in some ways I found them as dry as the environment they were in and I'm not sure why. I am troubled by this, but maybe it's because I haven't read too much fiction of the more 'literary' variety so far. The majority of what I did feel reading this book was rage, the reminder that yet another group of people had their home and their landscape stolen from them, and their families, their very peoples, stripped of their culture and in many ways their lives. The colonisation of Australia (and New Zealand) and it's lasting effects on the indiginous communities of those lands tends to get forgotten in the scheme of things worldwide, and that is almost as much of a travesty as it happening in the first place.