Phoenix lives with his four siblings, their Gran and long-suffering aunt Josie who isn’t impressed at being lumbered with her dead sister’s children. Phoenix is her least favourite as he’s not like his brothers and sisters.

His teachers claim he doesn’t concentrate in class, and he claims to have visions of strange things. His dreams are even more bizarre lately, with ravens with red sneakers and a girl drowned in a local bog. His sleepwalking causes problems too.

One day after a adventure with his siblings, they return home with a secret hiding at the backs of their tongues. Little brother Walter fell in the bog. They know they weren’t allowed anywhere near it, and trouble will follow if anyone breathes a word of it. Then Walter falls ill….

100 years later, Shelby lives in a closed community with exactly 349 other people on exactly 700 hectares. She has grown up to be kind and ethical in a simple life. There is little technology, with only one phone for the mayor to use to call local government if an emergency arises.

Shelby is kept busy on an egg farm with her father who has been wishing for a new partner since his wife passed away. But the elderly school teacher wants to retire and a couple want a baby. The critical 350 only people rule can’t be broken, so everyone is used to waiting for someone new to join them.

In school, they have learnt about these optimum ratios of people on land, and that the fences around their community are not to be breached for any reason. The land outside contains abandoned cities and an Earth that needs time to replenish itself after the brutal pandemics, ruthless droughts, fire storms, and raging hurricanes that swept across it with climate change. Shelby’s generation have learnt to be kind and patient, marvelling at the greed, ignorance and intolerance of long past generations.

They are content to continue this simple life, until Shelby finds a hole in their fence….

What could have made it? It wasn’t a sheep made hole. The wire has been cut!

The Raven’s Song is a seamless collaboration between two multi award winning authors. After planning the story together they both went away to write their chapters. One is telling the story of Phoenix who lives in a world only a decade or so away from now, and the other tells Shelby’s story 100 years in the future.

I admit this threw me a little as I found my way into the story. Once I clicked onto who was who and that they were living in different times, I settled into their lives and separate stories.

Phoenix’s tale is told in 3rd person as he is bothered by dreams and visions and determining reality from truth, and Shelby’s story is in 1st person as she investigates something strange happening on the edge of her property.

The more I read, the more their stories touched, then crashed, then flowed together into an understanding that left me thinking….”Wow!”

The Raven’s Song is mystical, futuristic, slightly creepy, cleverly structured and written, and connecting to our own lives right now. 

Authors – Zana Fraillon & Bren MacDibble

Age – 10+

(2022, Allen & Unwin, Raven, Rook, Birds, Message, Dream, Vision, Sleepwalk, Siblings, Little Brother, Future Fic, Futuristic, Dystopian, Pandemic, Virus, Climate Change, Community, Kindness, Honoured land, Fenced, Rules, Simple Life, Best Friend, Doctor, Discovery, Abandoned Cities, City, Stranger, Drones, Solar Trains, NZ, Blended Family, Dystopian, Environment, Family, Friendship, Future, Mystery, School, Science, Secret)