title: Nightpeople
Author: Anthony Eaton
Published: 2005 Queensland Press
Saria is the last of her kind, the final child of the Darklands, a quarantined expanse of outback desert, contaminated hundreds of years earlier by the remote and mysterious Nightpeople. In a dying world, she is the last ray of hope.
Spirited away at her birth before the Nightpeople could remove her from the genetic pool, Saria, now in her early teens, is summoned to appear before the Council of Dreamers. There she discovers the story of her past, and the nightmare truth of her people's future, and as history draws the Darklanders towards an inevitable fate, Saria determines to take the only course available to her, whatever the cost.
Nightpeople, the first book of the Darklands trilogy, explores a society turned in on itself and a future which readers will find both alien and disturbingly familiar.
I love the sound of this book, fantasy and Aussie books and two of my favourite things so i thought that i was set to love this book. i met Anthony Eaton last term and the way he described it the idea sound fantastic as you'd think from the blurb pinched from his website. i was very excited when i got it for holiday reading from the library.
the book begins really well, you really want to know what's going to happen to this baby saved from the 'nightpeople', and the 2nd chapter was good as well. Eaton has you wanting to know what's going to happen and what makes Saria special, but the story seemed to fizzle out after the first 2 chapters, for me at least. i kept reading but it seemed like nothing was really happening. i tried on many occasions to finish is, but i just didn't get through it. it went back to the library unfinished. I'd like to try it again some time, because i love the idea of an Australian set fantasy and the premise was brilliant, but the writing let t down. not enough happened, or enough was given away to keep me hanging on. it seemed to drag.
this said, i plan to try some of his other novels, because he was just lovely and hilarious.
