From Kirkus Reviews
A Down Under author (the prize-winning The Day of the Dog, etc., not reviewed) weaves a complicated fantasy set 3,000 years in the Australian future. So long ago that history has become legend, a nuclear holocaust ended white civilization and drove both black and white survivors underground to live in gigantic caves. Eons later, the surface is habitable again, though somewhat radioactive, and the sun remains ferocious, shortening many lives with its gift of melanoma. Weller makes extensive use of the languages of contemporary aborigines from New South Wales and Western Australia as well as Spanish, West Indian English, and even Hebrew to construct the talk of a nomadic aboriginal tribe, the Keepers of the Trees; a lesbian or goddess tribe whose lives are guided by phases of the moon; an elvin, underground people with telepathic powers; a Panhellenic race of vintners fond of human sacrifice; huge, mutant, intelligent ants; and four Jamaican aviators, very much off-course, who wander about Australia looking for petrol. All unite against a common enemythe vicious, almost superhuman white cannibals who come from underground at night, like the Morlocks of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, to prey upon other humans as if they were cattle. Before the cannibals can be vanquished, the fierce leader of the Violet Lynx Foot clan, Ilgar, must convince warring peoples to set aside their prejudices of religion and race, and unite against a common foe. Then Ilgar, renamed the Red King in his hour of triumph, founds a new and peaceful future beside his queen, the seeress S'shony. Vivid and immensely entertaining scene by scene, though there are so many characters and Weller's plot is so episodic that many readers will give up before reaching Ilgar's great, climactic battle. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
