Nation
Terry Pratchett
 The time is 1860 (the book refers to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species having just come out). The place is a world, strangely like ours, but different in many subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways. Scattered across the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean are chains of tiny islands. On one island, a boy named Mau has almost completed his ritual ordeal to become a man. Now he must launch the canoe he has built into the ocean and sail back to his home island, where he will receive his adult tattoos and be given a man-soul to replace the child-soul he has left behind. His entire village awaits him on the beach for his arrival. Aboard the schooner Sweet Judy, presently voyaging through the Southern Pelagic Ocean, bound for Port Mercia, Ermintrude ("Daphne") Fanshaw sails to join her father, the Governor of the Pelagic Territories, presently stationed at Port Mercia. In England, the dreaded Russian Influenza has killed all other heirs to the throne. The Gentlemen of Last Resort, a secret organisation serving the Crown, set out for Port Mercia to bring back Daphne's father within the nine months required by the ratified version of the Magna Carta, accompanied by the heir's mother. Thanks to the epidemic, he is now king, and Ermintrude is now heir to the throne of the British Empire. Neither she nor anyone else within ten thousand miles knows this. Far to the south, a volcano erupts, blowing itself to bits and setting off an enormous tsunami. When the wave has passed, only Mau and Ermintrude remain alive, marooned together among the wreckage and corpses on the island called the Nation. Having left his boy soul behind but with no one remaining to give him his adult tattoos, Mau considers himself to be without a soul. Without his soul, Mau describes himself as a vulnerable blue hermit crab that has left one shell to seek another. This is a major theme throughout the book, since Mau is a man without a country. Just as a soulless person hungers for a soul, Mau is driven to rebuild his country. Upon arrival at the island, Mau discovers that his entire village and family has been wiped out by the tsunami. Numb with horror Mau begins burying the dead, sending them into the sea wrapped in a substance called papervine, a type of tough local vegetation. Island tradition says that the dead, buried at sea will become dolphins. Distraught at what he is doing, he attempts to disassociate himself from his task, working on a kind of mental auto-pilot. Finally, after sending the last corpse into the sea he considers his life as a soulless person, neither boy nor man, and considers suicide. He is only prevented from doing so by Ermintrude, who tries to talk to him. In his dream state, Mau believes her to be a ghost, as she is pale-skinned and dressed in white. Ermintrude is a resourceful girl with an active interest in science. Her ocean voyage was intended to be a way to get away from her overbearing grandmother and create a new life with her kindly, widowed father. Instead, she finds herself surviving mutiny, storm, and shipwreck. She is afraid of Mau, but after watching him bury his dead, she leaves Mau a mango on a plate. When they meet again, she tries to shoot him with a pistol. Fortunately, the gunpowder in the pistol is wet, and the gun fails to fire. Mau mistakenly believes that by waving a gun around, Ermintrude is giving him a spark-maker to make fire. With determination and good faith, the two begin to help each other and establish some basic communication. Ermintrude introduces herself as "Daphne" and never uses her given name, which she has always hated. Soon, drawn by the smoke of Mau's fire, other survivors from neighbouring islands arrive at the Nation, including an old priest called Ataba, and a nameless woman and her infant. The woman cannot breastfeed, and the baby will die unless someone can find milk. With desperation and resourcefulness, Mau finds a way to get milk from a wild pig at great danger to himself. Due to Mau's lack of a soul and his rejection of the gods (since they failed to save his family from the tsunami), Ataba believes that Mau is possessed by a demon, referring to him as "Demon Boy" for most of the rest of his life. A few days later, more survivors arrive, including strong Milo and silver-tongued Pilu, two brothers who are able to communicate with Daphne in English. This speeds the translation of language along considerably. Milos' wife is heavily pregnant and 13-year-old Daphne is drafted as a midwife. She brings the child into the world, singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" throughout the birth, a choice that makes Milo revere Daphne throughout the rest of the book. Confronted with the problem of the missing "god anchors" (white, non-indigenous stones that are said to "anchor" the gods and stop them drifting away), Mau locates and then tries to salvage them from the lagoon, where they have been left by the raging tsunami. He locates and restores two of the original three god anchors but, whilst underwater, searching for the third, he discovers several more of the white stones, one of them with a carving on it. The priest, Ataba, tries to destroy one of the god stones, which he claims to be false. His rage causes him to thrash about in the lagoon and he attracts the attention of a shark. Mau is nearly killed rescuing him from the shark and, having suffered hypothermia and chronic sleep deprivation (he has obsessively spent his nights guarding the beach) Mau falls into a coma. Accepting a magic poison from the women of the island, Daphne travels to the land of Locaha, the Nation's god of death, and rescues him. Still more survivors arrive, bringing news of cannibal raiders from another island who are hunting survivors. Daphne is at one point told by the Grandmothers (the not-at-all remembered counterpart to the ancestral Grandfathers) to open the cave of the Grandfathers. Convincing Mau that this is what they should do, Daphne, Ataba, and Mau enter the Grandfathers' cave, an ancient burial chamber. There, they discover that the Nation is far older than any other civilisation on Earth, and has made huge discoveries (up to and including maps of the stars, telescopes and glasses) which have later been forgotten. Their knowledge of the stars is shown in the ancient legends of the Nation, which can also be seen as metaphors for the movements of the planets. It is from this ancient cave that the white stone that formed the god anchors came. The ancient discoveries remained part of the history of the Nation, but only as stories told to children. When Mau, Daphne and Ataba leave the cave they are met by two English men who mutinied on the Sweet Judy and who were set adrift by the captain of that ship. When the old priest Ataba threatens them with a spear, the mutineers shoot and kill him. They take Daphne hostage as she tells the islanders to melt into the forest. She learns from them that the leader of the mutiny, a man named Cox, has joined the tribe of cannibal raiders, who worship the death god Locaha. Soon after this Daphne offers the two men a local type of moonshine beer. However, one of the mutineers refuses to spit into the beer, which neutralises the poisons in the beer and his first drink kills him. This causes the other to be scared off. He later escapes the island and meets up with Cox and the cannibal raiders. Certain that the raiders will arrive soon, Mau arranges for the cannons on board the Sweet Judy to be set up overlooking the bay for the defense of the Nation. A test firing goes well. However, they only have enough gunpowder for one more shot. The Raiders arrive, with Cox as their new chieftain. Daphne immediately notices that the Raiders hate Cox, but according to their laws they must accept him as chieftain because he killed the previous chieftain. Instead of allowing Cox and the Raiders to attack the entire village, Mau has the only intact cannon, which was reinforced with papervine, fired, frightening the Raiders. The Raiders and the Nation then agree to have the chiefs fight in single combat, as is the tradition. Everyone is surprised when strong Milo announces that Mau is the actual chief of the Nation. Cox is annoyed because a small boy is a more difficult target than a large man, but he is sure that his two pistols can take care of Mau. Mau remembers Daphne's first wet attempt to shoot him, however, and he knows that gunpowder fails when wet. Mau takes the battle into the lagoon, where Mau's skill as a swimmer and his knowledge of the territory help him win the duel. Enraged with the wrath of Locaha, Mau drives away the Raiders, forcing them to release their prisoners. A few days after this battle, Daphne's father arrives. He, like Daphne, is fascinated with the discovery made in the Grandfathers' cave. The Gentlemen of Last Resort arrive two weeks later, informing Daphne's father of his new status as King and presenting him with the crown. Mau, who has learned about world politics from Daphne and Pilu, does not want to become part of the Empire but requests that his Nation become a member of the scientific Royal Society. In the end, Daphne leaves with her father. Though it is never explicitly stated in the book, it is clear that she and Mau would rather stay on the island and be together, but their combined sense of duty leads her to return to England and Mau to remain behind. Years later, in an alternate present day, an old scientist tells this story to two children of the present-day Nation. He explains that Daphne returned to England to marry a prince from Holland and that Mau died of old age. When Daphne died, her body was sent to the Nation to be buried at sea so that her soul would become a dolphin. He tells them that from those days onward, thousands of scientists have visited the island, including Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, and Richard Feynman, and that dozens of observatories have been created to learn about the stars, as the Nation has done for thousands of years. The book ends with the elder of the two children (the girl - by six minutes) standing guard on the beach, protecting the Nation as Mau had done years before. In the lagoon, a dolphin leaps from the sea and the scientist smiles. The book ends with several small "Don't try this at home" warnings, explaining how the book came about and how some of the things described in the book have real-world counterparts, if somewhat dangerous ones.