Nation

I was sad when I finished Terry Pratchett's Discworld series last year. I've been reading it since 2008, and a part of me thought I could just keep reading it forever (andt to be fair, I am in the midst of an epic re-read right now). The series is more or less synonymous with Pratchett. But it turns out that he also wrote a lot of books that don't take place on the Discworld. I still have a lot of Pratchett books to work through.

The first one I decided to pick up was Nation, which I've been hearing about for years and had a really hard time finding. It's a fantastic young-adult novel that subverts a bunch of old adventure tropes by giving most of the book's perspective to the island natives and having the potential romance turn into a strong, lifelong friendship.

The book mostly focuses on Mau and Daphne, two survivors of the ostensible end of the world. Mau is the only survivor of his village when a tidal wave hits the island. Daphne is on a ship crossing the ocean for America when the tidal wave hits, and she washes up on shore. The two work through language barriers and grief to keep each other alive. And as more refugess begin to wash up on shore, they start to rebuild the village.

This whole book is lovely. It sets up an alternate history of our world, one in which compassionate people were put in charge and scientific advancement became favored over war and empire-building. It's a fun little what-if scenario, one that's nice to imagine.

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