The Crowlings Book

Gamma Centuri Five is an earth colony world, a planet of ruined cities and indigenous tribal people. A native youth becomes a man and takes the name Ben Crowling, only to return home and find his clan massacred. Ben helps to lead the remaining children to safety, but two generations later his grandson, Mikklau, rejects the ways of the clan and seeks his fortune with the Earthers. It is Mikklau's granddaughter who must lead the people full circle as the earth civilisation collapses. Louise Lawrence is the author of many previous young adult novels, including the Carnegie Medal shortlisted The Power of Stars. With the three part structure of The Crowlings she pays skilful homage to Walter M. Miller's SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, while the theme of crow-like creatures rising against humanity offers tribute to Frank Baker's seminal 1936 novel The Birds, and to a lesser extent the more famous Daphne Du Maurier tale found in The Birds and Other Stories. It is not really convincing as SF because the colonial society on an alien world is so very much like contemporary America, yet this similarity does makes the book work as a powerful moral fable concerned for the plight of the dispossessed and downtrodden. Fortunately, Lawrence's characters are drawn strongly enough to compensate for what may be a deliberate lack of expected technology, and she brings this thoughtful novel to an exciting and tension filled resolution. --Gary S. DalkinRead More