The Raven’s Song by Zana Fraillon and Bren MacDibble

Title: The Raven’s Song

Author: Zana Fraillon and Bren MacDibble

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 5^th October

Format: Paperback

Pages: 288

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: A wonderful children’s novel by two stellar writers featuring Shelby and Phoenix, living 100 years apart yet unexpectedly joined across time – and each make the discovery of a lifetime that has the potential to upend their worlds.

‘This is how we have to live now.’

Shelby and her best friend Davy live quiet low-tech lives in a closed community that is made up of exactly three hundred and fifty kind, ethical people living on exactly seven hundred hectares.

When they climb through a hole in the perimeter fence to venture into the surrounding jungle, what they find is more astonishing than anything they could have imagined.

And when Shelby realises the terrible danger that is unfolding, it will take all of her daring and determination to ensure the past does not repeat itself.

Intriguing, absorbing and spine-tinglingly good, The Raven’s Song is a brilliant novel by two esteemed writers at the height of their powers.

~*~

Phoenix and Shelby live one hundred years apart – Phoenix in the 2020s, in a time when the world is falling apart in an eerie echo and potential prediction of what might come, when a virus not unlike COVID-19 appears, but it only affects children under a certain age. One hundred years later, Shelby lives in a closed, low-tech community – three hundred and fifty kind and ethical people all living on exactly seven hundred acres. They can never have any more than three hundred and fifty people in their community – nor any less, as once someone dies, applications are put in for another person to join – a baby, or a spouse. Shelby and her best friend, Davy have lived a quiet life for so long, that when they find a city that is falling apart, and taken over by nature, they start to explore until they find a facility full of eggs, and an old man who hangs around and leaves things in a tree. It is what is in the eggs in the old facility that shocks Shelby – and as she races against time to fulfil what the old man had promised he would do, she discovers one egg has come to life – Phoenix. But what has she done by releasing Phoenix? Has she unleashed a deadly virus that will kill everyone in her kind, ethical community?

The Raven’s song moves between Shelby and Phoenix’s perspectives, as Zana and Bren build up to the two meeting and the implications of this, allowing us to gain an insight of how Shelby’s world has come to be, and how it compares to the world Phoenix lives in, where they almost seem to have given up in some ways and are just accepting what is happening – until the sickness hits. I think writing about the COVID-19 pandemic in this way – where it is COVID but in a different way, gives us a story we need – a pandemic story, where we see the build-up, the effects, and the aftermath without actually being in the COVID times we are in. In a way, I think the parallels give us some distance from what we know but still allow us to associate our experiences to what Phoenix and Shelby are experiencing. It gives us an insight into what could have happened, what might happen, and makes us think about how can avoid this – or what people might do to try and save the people that the sickness affects.

As someone who has shied away a bit from pandemic books – at least the ones that are all in, and ramp up the pandemic situation, I have found stories like this, and that reference the pandemic without being too intense, especially in kids’ books, easier to read. These books allow middle grade readers and older to process the pandemic and their responses in a way that makes sense for them, because we have all had different experiences during the pandemic, and there will never be one story that allows everyone to deal with their feelings. Perhaps this is why we need a wide array of pandemic stories that reference or deal with the pandemic in a few different ways. It’s a matter of working out what we as readers need in this area, as I have done. I have also enjoyed reading books without the pandemic – and it’s this balance that has made reading about the COVID-19 pandemic, or a pandemic in the last few months easier. The books I have read have allowed me to build up to reading books that reference it. Though I still don’t feel ready for books that are all about the pandemic and only about the pandemic, at least there are all sorts of books that deal with it – or don’t – out there for everyone.

Bren and Zana’s story is wonderful and evocative, and I loved that the uniqueness of the characters came through clearly and eloquently, allowing readers to inhabit the worlds and lives of Shelby and Phoenix. It is this sort of thing that draws me in as a reader and lets me engage with a story. I got to inhabit each of their worlds, as unsettling as Phoenix’s world was, and as heartbreaking as some parts of the story were, it captured so many complex feelings that we have all been experiencing over the past few years – that’s why I think this book will allow many readers to process how they’ve been feeling in a safe and somewhat distant but not too distant way. I think creating a pandemic that wasn’t COVID-19 helped ground this story, because we can see how it mirrors the real-world pandemic. We can see how history can repeat itself, and not always in good ways.

I’ve been reading quite a few co-authored books lately, and the ones I have read have worked so seamlessly yet have also allowed the characters to have distinct voices, so it possible that one author wrote one, whilst one wrote the other. The triumph is when these two narratives are stitched together and become a whole, become something that is evocative, uniting, and wholly engaging. This book is sensitively written, engaging, and fulfils something we all need right now – hope for the future.