Ancestral Journeys

Jean Manco's Ancestral Journeys was a Brotherhood Books impulse buy, and I didn't really know what I was getting. It's actually quite a scholarly book, though packaged up appealingly with lots of pictures and break-out sidebars to break up the text. It's a multi-disciplinary approach to tracking the movements of peoples across (mostly) Europe during prehistory, drawing on archeology, genetics and linguistics to piece together the likely shifts of population, whether by invasion, wandering, retreat or expansion.

I must admit that some of the detailed explanations of DNA haplo-groups made my eyes water and I tended to skim those sections! But Ancestral Journeys excels at painting a big picture of climate changes, the spread of agriculture, and the rise and fall of empires. I found the sections about language the most engaging -- I'm always up for a discussion of Proto-Indo-European and its descendants in modern languages. Ancestral Journeys covers millennia, from the very first humans emerging from Africa, right up to the Vikings, in a relatively short and easy to digest package: a great overview.
 

Swallow's Dance

Another treasure from the Allen & Unwin shelves (I told you I did well). Swallow's Dance is the middle volume of Wendy Orr's Minoan trilogy, though the three books don't share any characters. I already have Dragonfly Song, but I hadn't read the other two in the series. All three books are written in a mix of free verse and prose.

Swallow's Dance centres on Leira, a young girl from the priestly caste who is on the verge of going through her Learning to become a woman and a priestess in her turn when disaster strikes -- a devastating earthquake destroys her city and injures her mother's mind. Leira, her now child-like mother and their elderly servant Nunu become a close unit, with Leira having to assume responsibility for providing for them all in a strange city where they are not welcome.

Wendy Orr was inspired to create Leira after noticing a very individual snub-nosed girl gathering saffron on an ancient wall fresco.

Poor Leira has to face many dangers and suffering, both physical and emotional, before her more hopeful ending, though all her troubles are certainly not over and she doesn't know what has happened to half her family. The worst tragedies happen off the page, so it's not too confronting for young readers, and Leira is a resourceful and determined heroine, though she does have periods of anxiety and terror. The Bronze Age background is fascinating, and there is beauty and joy as well as peril and sorrow in Leira's story. I really enjoyed Swallow's Dance, and what a great cover from Josh Durham (who also designed the cover of Crow Country).