The sea has taken everything.
Thirteen-year-old Mau is the only one left after a giant wave sweeps his island village away. But when much is taken, something is returned, and somewhere in the jungle, Daphne — a girl from the other side of the globe — is the sole survivor of a ship destroyed by the same wave.
Together, the two confront the aftermath of catastrophe. And slowly, other refugees arrive — children without parents, mothers without babies, husbands without wives — all of them hungry and all of them frightened. As Mau and Daphne struggle to keep the small band safe and fed, they defy ancestral spirits, challenge death himself, and uncover a long-hidden secret that literally turns the world upside down . . . .
Internationally revered storyteller Terry Pratchett presents a breathtaking adventure of survival and discovery, and of the courage required to forge new beliefs.
After a giant wave has hit his home island, Mau returns from the rituals for transitioning from a boy to a man to find that everyone has been washed away. Along comes Daphne, who was washed ashore after the ship on which she was traveling was caught in the same wave. Narrator Stephen Briggs deftly acts as guide as the building of a new nation begins in a time like the nineteenth century in a place like those on the edges of the British Empire. Briggs adopts a tone of fun without resorting to outrageous hilarity and thus preserves the satire, and the overall sweetness, of the story. He preserves the proper British manners of Daphne's father, who has now become king and whose position allows him to finally put his mother in her place. J.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
