Dawn Hawk, Ken Catran, Lothian, 95 pages, paperback, ISBN 0-7344-0468-9
Auckland teenager Hepzibah Rebecca Longfoot is known as Focus because she is focussed on becoming a space shuttle pilot. Her friend Bryce is equally focussed on becoming a writer (of romantic fiction as Brioney Forestvale, of horror as Bryon Groomwald, and of the supernatural as Bruce Graveburg). Suddenly the pair have to focus on staying alive. Ken Catran has concocted a riveting yarn about the search for a valuable concealed sea-plane (the Dawn Hawk of the title) and added some really droll characters. These seem to include two sweet little old ladies, a brash American millionaire, the most boring man in the world, and several people who can only be described as henchmen. As always, in a Catran novel, nobody is quite as they at first seem. Good clean criminal fun, with a rousing conclusion, this story cries out to be filmed.
This review was first published in The Press, Christchurch in 2003.
Showing posts with label Ken catran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ken catran. Show all posts
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Sunday, 30 March 2008
Monsters of Blood and Honour Ken Catran
Monsters of Blood and Honour Ken Catran, Random House, 239 pages, paperback, NZ$19.99
ISBN 978-1-86941-938-7
Ken Catran’s latest book contains three novellas about the Second World War. In each a modern teenager learns of the experiences of an aged survivor. As always with Catran, the technical detail is rich and the emotional level is set high. In Mr Parkin’s Milk Run to Hell, Jase, a fast-driving hoon is surprised to find that old Fred Parkin had helped create a firestorm over Hamburg when he was only 18. Was burning civilians a war crime? Similar moral issues arise in Jooney’s Day at the Beach, when Sarah reads her Great-Aunt Jooney’s account of Japanese troops shooting nurses and patients after the fall of Singapore. Sarah is baffled by the way Jooney – the sole survivor – can feel sympathy for one of the Japanese involved in the atrocity.
The most controversial (and least successful) of the stories, Old Goodey and the Fortress of Dreams, brings an unrepentant old Nazi into contact with a disturbed teen, Robin, who has fantasies of using a tank to shoot everyone in their home town. Then he finds that an elderly local has concealed his past. Goodey is virulently anti-semitic, an SS member who fought in the great tank battle at Kursk and was then a concentration camp guard at Belsen. “I thought those things were right and I still do,” says Goodey before creating his own Gotterdammerung. Although Robin’s response to Goodey’s death is muddled, he does dispose of Goodey’s SS dagger with its “blood and honour” motto. He climbs down from his clifftop refuge, symbolically rejecting his earlier violent fantasies.
Catran is aware that it is always difficult for one generation to understand the experiences of another. These short and lively first person narratives certainly make a good starting point for young readers who are coming to grips with some of the human complexities behind the battles.
Trevor Agnew
This review was first published in The Press, Christchurch NZ, on 15th March 2008.
ISBN 978-1-86941-938-7
Ken Catran’s latest book contains three novellas about the Second World War. In each a modern teenager learns of the experiences of an aged survivor. As always with Catran, the technical detail is rich and the emotional level is set high. In Mr Parkin’s Milk Run to Hell, Jase, a fast-driving hoon is surprised to find that old Fred Parkin had helped create a firestorm over Hamburg when he was only 18. Was burning civilians a war crime? Similar moral issues arise in Jooney’s Day at the Beach, when Sarah reads her Great-Aunt Jooney’s account of Japanese troops shooting nurses and patients after the fall of Singapore. Sarah is baffled by the way Jooney – the sole survivor – can feel sympathy for one of the Japanese involved in the atrocity.
The most controversial (and least successful) of the stories, Old Goodey and the Fortress of Dreams, brings an unrepentant old Nazi into contact with a disturbed teen, Robin, who has fantasies of using a tank to shoot everyone in their home town. Then he finds that an elderly local has concealed his past. Goodey is virulently anti-semitic, an SS member who fought in the great tank battle at Kursk and was then a concentration camp guard at Belsen. “I thought those things were right and I still do,” says Goodey before creating his own Gotterdammerung. Although Robin’s response to Goodey’s death is muddled, he does dispose of Goodey’s SS dagger with its “blood and honour” motto. He climbs down from his clifftop refuge, symbolically rejecting his earlier violent fantasies.
Catran is aware that it is always difficult for one generation to understand the experiences of another. These short and lively first person narratives certainly make a good starting point for young readers who are coming to grips with some of the human complexities behind the battles.
Trevor Agnew
This review was first published in The Press, Christchurch NZ, on 15th March 2008.
Saturday, 10 March 2007
Moran Quartet Complete
TERESA MORAN –SOLDIER Ken Catran, illustrations by Gaston Vanzet, Lothian/ Hachette Livre, 233 pages, paperback, NZ$16.99
ISBN 987-0-7344-0963-8
The Moran family have a proud history in the New Zealand Army. Jacko Moran was a sniper at Gallipoli and the Western Front, while his son Robert served in Crete, El Alamein and Italy. Both won the VC. Jimmy Moran survived Vietnam and rose to be Chief of Staff. No, you haven’t been sleeping in history lessons. The Moran family are the creation of prolific novelist Ken Catran, who has started 2007 with a bang by winning the Margaret Mahy Medal, being appointed Writer-in-Residence at the University of Waikato and completing the award-winning Moran Quartet with Teresa Moran – Soldier.
Like the three generations before her, Teresa finds that the stress of combat damages her private life. Her use of flashbacks and research into family history gives the reader further insight into each of the Morans and their troubled personalities. Like her father before her, Lieutenant Teresa Moran learns that the enemy is not easy to identify in modern warfare; the press can sometimes be more dangerous. Leading a patrol into an ambush in Timor, she survives but finds herself in a media firestorm. When her father pulls strings to have Teresa attached to an Australian unit in Iraq, a terrorist group realises that kidnapping an important officer’s daughter would create publicity.
As usual Catran’s wide-ranging research creates plausible military confrontations, and Teresa’s smouldering conflict with her father is equally convincing. It is unfortunate that she spends so little of her first-person narrative serving with New Zealanders, but a representative band of Australians, Americans and Iraqis help fill the gap. Teresa’s exploits in Baghdad may be over-dramatised but the trademark gritty reality of the Moran saga has been maintained to the end.
Note: The other three novels are Jacko Moran - Sniper, Robert Moran - Private and Jimmy Moran – Regular.
Trevor Agnew
ISBN 987-0-7344-0963-8
The Moran family have a proud history in the New Zealand Army. Jacko Moran was a sniper at Gallipoli and the Western Front, while his son Robert served in Crete, El Alamein and Italy. Both won the VC. Jimmy Moran survived Vietnam and rose to be Chief of Staff. No, you haven’t been sleeping in history lessons. The Moran family are the creation of prolific novelist Ken Catran, who has started 2007 with a bang by winning the Margaret Mahy Medal, being appointed Writer-in-Residence at the University of Waikato and completing the award-winning Moran Quartet with Teresa Moran – Soldier.
Like the three generations before her, Teresa finds that the stress of combat damages her private life. Her use of flashbacks and research into family history gives the reader further insight into each of the Morans and their troubled personalities. Like her father before her, Lieutenant Teresa Moran learns that the enemy is not easy to identify in modern warfare; the press can sometimes be more dangerous. Leading a patrol into an ambush in Timor, she survives but finds herself in a media firestorm. When her father pulls strings to have Teresa attached to an Australian unit in Iraq, a terrorist group realises that kidnapping an important officer’s daughter would create publicity.
As usual Catran’s wide-ranging research creates plausible military confrontations, and Teresa’s smouldering conflict with her father is equally convincing. It is unfortunate that she spends so little of her first-person narrative serving with New Zealanders, but a representative band of Australians, Americans and Iraqis help fill the gap. Teresa’s exploits in Baghdad may be over-dramatised but the trademark gritty reality of the Moran saga has been maintained to the end.
Note: The other three novels are Jacko Moran - Sniper, Robert Moran - Private and Jimmy Moran – Regular.
Trevor Agnew
Thursday, 30 November 2006
Red Leader Down, Ken Catran, 2006
RED LEADER DOWN Ken Catran, Random House, Auckland, New Zealand, 2006, 206 pages, paperback, NZ$18.99. ISBN 1-86941-759-3
Red Leader Down takes readers from small-town New Zealand to a savage air war sixty years earlier. When Matt’s grandfather, Guthrie Tucker, a former RAF fighter pilot dies, Matt finds that someone has stolen his medals and an account Guthrie wrote of the fierce aerial combat on the borders of Germany in the last winter of World War Two.
Using Catran’s familiar and effective double-narrative technique, we follow both Guthrie’s harrowing career as a Tempest pilot and young Matt’s efforts to separate truth from lies six decades later. Catran’s account of the fierce fighting against the last desperate efforts of the Luftwaffe is well-researched and exciting, while Matt is baffled to find his dead grandfather accused of cowardice and murder.
The final revelation is both grim and satisfying.
Trevor Agnew
Trevor Agnew
First published in The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand on August 12th 2006.
Saturday, 25 November 2006
Sea of Mutiny, Ken Catran, 2005
SEA OF MUTINY Ken Catran, Random House, Auckland, New Zealand, 2005, paperback, 152 pages, NZ$18.95 ISBN 1-86941-707-0
THE GUARDIAN OF THE LAND Joanna Orwin, HarperCollins, [1985], Collins Modern New Zealand Classics series, 2005, Auckland, New Zealand, paperback, 231 pages, NZ$16.99
ISBN 1-86950-575-1
THIRD DEGREE Tania Roxborogh, Longacre, Dunedin, New Zealand, 2005, paperback, 153 pages, NZ$18.95 ISBN 1-877361-10-0
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY William Taylor, HarperCollins, Auckland, New Zealand, 2005, paperback, 160 pages, NZ$16.99 ISBN 1-86950-549-2
Great teenage reading:
Has there ever been a better time for young New Zealanders to read novels? Of the four selected this month, three are set in New Zealand, three are by writers connected with Canterbury and all four are well-written stories aimed at teenage readers.
Ken Catran’s Sea of Mutiny is full of surprises about the Bounty mutiny, not least how young some of those involved were. Only 14 when he first sailed on the Bounty, Midshipman John Hallett was one of the 18 loyal men set adrift in a small boat with Lieutenant William Bligh, when Fletcher Christian seized the ship. Hallett, a sharp observer, tells of Bligh’s amazing seamanship – navigating a crowded open boat on a 48 day voyage from Tonga to Timor – and reflects on Bligh’s unusual personality, and whether mutiny could have been avoided.
Catran has researched well and creates a lively picture of the hard life at sea, and the dramatic contrast with Tahiti, seen by the crew as a sailors’ paradise. This fast-moving action story offers fresh insights into well-known events.
The main characters of Joanna Orwin’s The Guardian of the Land are also young but soon find themselves facing adult challenges. Searching for an ancient whale tooth pendant, Rua and David are repeatedly thrown back in time, experiencing some of Kaikoura’s turbulent past. They hunt seals with Ngai Tahu, witness a brutal massacre by Te Rauparaha, join shore-whalers harpooning a sperm whale and encounter racial prejudice and injustice. Joanna Orwin’s deep knowledge of history and science are reflected in this richly detailed novel.
First published twenty years ago, its message remains timeless. Respect for the land, its past and its power, brings Maori and Pakeha together in a lively conclusion. The pendant which lies at the heart of the story can be seen in the Canterbury Museum.
A minor burn, while poaching an egg, triggers a rush of memories for Ruth in Tania Roxborogh’s Third Degree. Now a student at Massey, Ruth recalls being badly scalded when she was ten and spending months in hospital. Children’s wards were once grim places and Roxborogh (using some of her own experiences in this story) has created a sharply drawn and sometimes very funny group of child patients, who show that the mind is as easily scarred as the body. To fill the gaps, Ruth has to ask her family about the past and soon realises that memory is a complex matter. Her mother has her own secrets and revealing the truth proves painful for both. The excitement, as Ruth puts together the jigsaw of her memories, makes this a gripping novel of healing and acceptance.
The charitable gesture of shipping British orphans to the Empire after World War Two led to some injustices. William Taylor’s ironically titled historical novel, Land of Milk and Honey, is based on genuine events, which adds to its grim flavour. Jake is not an orphan; his mother died in the bombing of Coventry and his father hopes he will prosper in New Zealand. Only 14 when he arrives at the Pearson’s run-down dairy farm in Taranaki, Jake is forbidden to go to school and is brutally ill-treated by both Mr Pearson and his son Darcy. After a failed escape attempt, Jake finally finds sanctuary with the peppery local doctor. When Darcy is released from Borstal, he attacks Jake again and the ensuing violence means that Jake has to face up to its corroding effects.
While there are shocking scenes of savagery in this novel, Jake is able to come to terms with what has happened, and his efforts to resume a normal life are successful. This historical novel, one of Taylor’s best, has a strong message for the present day.
Trevor Agnew
First published in The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand, on September 17th 2005.
THE GUARDIAN OF THE LAND Joanna Orwin, HarperCollins, [1985], Collins Modern New Zealand Classics series, 2005, Auckland, New Zealand, paperback, 231 pages, NZ$16.99
ISBN 1-86950-575-1
THIRD DEGREE Tania Roxborogh, Longacre, Dunedin, New Zealand, 2005, paperback, 153 pages, NZ$18.95 ISBN 1-877361-10-0
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY William Taylor, HarperCollins, Auckland, New Zealand, 2005, paperback, 160 pages, NZ$16.99 ISBN 1-86950-549-2
Great teenage reading:
Has there ever been a better time for young New Zealanders to read novels? Of the four selected this month, three are set in New Zealand, three are by writers connected with Canterbury and all four are well-written stories aimed at teenage readers.
Ken Catran’s Sea of Mutiny is full of surprises about the Bounty mutiny, not least how young some of those involved were. Only 14 when he first sailed on the Bounty, Midshipman John Hallett was one of the 18 loyal men set adrift in a small boat with Lieutenant William Bligh, when Fletcher Christian seized the ship. Hallett, a sharp observer, tells of Bligh’s amazing seamanship – navigating a crowded open boat on a 48 day voyage from Tonga to Timor – and reflects on Bligh’s unusual personality, and whether mutiny could have been avoided.
Catran has researched well and creates a lively picture of the hard life at sea, and the dramatic contrast with Tahiti, seen by the crew as a sailors’ paradise. This fast-moving action story offers fresh insights into well-known events.
The main characters of Joanna Orwin’s The Guardian of the Land are also young but soon find themselves facing adult challenges. Searching for an ancient whale tooth pendant, Rua and David are repeatedly thrown back in time, experiencing some of Kaikoura’s turbulent past. They hunt seals with Ngai Tahu, witness a brutal massacre by Te Rauparaha, join shore-whalers harpooning a sperm whale and encounter racial prejudice and injustice. Joanna Orwin’s deep knowledge of history and science are reflected in this richly detailed novel.
First published twenty years ago, its message remains timeless. Respect for the land, its past and its power, brings Maori and Pakeha together in a lively conclusion. The pendant which lies at the heart of the story can be seen in the Canterbury Museum.
A minor burn, while poaching an egg, triggers a rush of memories for Ruth in Tania Roxborogh’s Third Degree. Now a student at Massey, Ruth recalls being badly scalded when she was ten and spending months in hospital. Children’s wards were once grim places and Roxborogh (using some of her own experiences in this story) has created a sharply drawn and sometimes very funny group of child patients, who show that the mind is as easily scarred as the body. To fill the gaps, Ruth has to ask her family about the past and soon realises that memory is a complex matter. Her mother has her own secrets and revealing the truth proves painful for both. The excitement, as Ruth puts together the jigsaw of her memories, makes this a gripping novel of healing and acceptance.
The charitable gesture of shipping British orphans to the Empire after World War Two led to some injustices. William Taylor’s ironically titled historical novel, Land of Milk and Honey, is based on genuine events, which adds to its grim flavour. Jake is not an orphan; his mother died in the bombing of Coventry and his father hopes he will prosper in New Zealand. Only 14 when he arrives at the Pearson’s run-down dairy farm in Taranaki, Jake is forbidden to go to school and is brutally ill-treated by both Mr Pearson and his son Darcy. After a failed escape attempt, Jake finally finds sanctuary with the peppery local doctor. When Darcy is released from Borstal, he attacks Jake again and the ensuing violence means that Jake has to face up to its corroding effects.
While there are shocking scenes of savagery in this novel, Jake is able to come to terms with what has happened, and his efforts to resume a normal life are successful. This historical novel, one of Taylor’s best, has a strong message for the present day.
Trevor Agnew
First published in The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand, on September 17th 2005.
Lin and the Red Stranger, Ken Catran, 2003
LIN AND THE RED STRANGER Ken Catran, Random House, Auckland, New Zealand, 2003, 174 pages, paperback, NZ$16.95. ISBN 1-86941-577-9
Writing for young people in New Zealand is now in what will be seen as a golden age, with many of our best writers at the peak of their powers. Ken Catran, for example, had three novels (historic, science fiction and comic) nominated for this year’s NZ Post Children’s Book Awards.
Writing for young people in New Zealand is now in what will be seen as a golden age, with many of our best writers at the peak of their powers. Ken Catran, for example, had three novels (historic, science fiction and comic) nominated for this year’s NZ Post Children’s Book Awards.
He shows the same energy with Lin and the Red Stranger, the fast-moving story of a Chinese servant-girl in the Otago goldfields. Pedants might complain that since he has four Chinese women characters at a time when there were none in New Zealand, this book is a fantasy. Maybe so, but Lin’s view of events provides a fresh perspective, while her encounters with the “red stranger” – Declan, a red-haired Irish lad about to start a criminal career – creates an unusual conflict of cultures.
Trevor Agnew
First published in The Press, Christchurch on March 6th 2004.
Trevor Agnew
First published in The Press, Christchurch on March 6th 2004.
Saturday, 18 November 2006
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ken Catran, 2005
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES Ken Catran, Scholastic, Auckland, New Zealand, 2005, 198 pages, paperback, $16.99.
ISBN 1-86943-546-X.
Dennis Wheatley’s name is unknown to teenage readers, so a novel in his style, set in small-town New Zealand, seems an odd choice. Kiwi teens may be baffled by the eldritch screams and gibbous moons but will recognise the pentacles and grimoires from Charmed. Ken Catran knows how to get a plot rolling and 17-year old Brad sells his soul and suddenly finds himself facing all the forces of evil, as the Dark Lord prepares to ride out. He and the beautiful Eithne have two Angels on their side but the dark powers have magpies helping them.
Dennis Wheatley’s name is unknown to teenage readers, so a novel in his style, set in small-town New Zealand, seems an odd choice. Kiwi teens may be baffled by the eldritch screams and gibbous moons but will recognise the pentacles and grimoires from Charmed. Ken Catran knows how to get a plot rolling and 17-year old Brad sells his soul and suddenly finds himself facing all the forces of evil, as the Dark Lord prepares to ride out. He and the beautiful Eithne have two Angels on their side but the dark powers have magpies helping them.
For mature teens.
Trevor Agnew
First published in The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand on September 3rd 2005
Trevor Agnew
First published in The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand on September 3rd 2005
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