A teenager takes an epic voyage to Antarctica with a fleet of traditional canoes to rescue the great whale and claim his lost inheritance…a return to the world and characters of the global bestseller The Whale Rider, thirty years on.
Sixteen-year-old Teva has never had contact with his father’s family. All he knows is that Raimana comes from Rurutu, a tiny island in French Polynesia. He met Teva’s mother while studying in France and decided not to return home. This created a rift with Teva’s grandfather, a chief and renowned traditional seafarer, which has never healed.
While Teva is kept in the dark about his Polynesian heritage, he is an outsider in France, too. With a curved back and a phobic terror of deep water, he stays in the shadows – until his acrobatic talents are discovered by circus master Jean-Luc. The teenager is cast as the star of the troupe’s forthcoming show, telling the daring exploits of a young prince of Hawaiki, legendary homeland of Polynesia.
All is not well with the royal tribe of Mysticeti. Lost in treacherous ice mazes surrounding Antarctica, the pod fears that their ancient leader has brought them there to die. Decades ago, in a similar dark, fey mood, he stranded them on a remote beach on the East Coast of New Zealand.
Tehani, the lowliest rearguard of the whales, is given his first solo mission – but it’s impossible. He must navigate a way out of the ice and find a human, the Whale Rider’s heir: the only one who has any hope of convincing their chief to lead his pod back to the warm waters of Rurutu. But nobody knows who the Whale Rider’s heir is, let alone where this person can be found.
Many worlds meet in Witi Ihimaera’s larger-than-life novel, which takes readers across the South Pacific from French Polynesia to New Zealand and Antarctica, revisiting the characters of his global bestselling novel and film Whale Rider, thirty years on. Reality mingles with mythology and ancient tales reform in contemporary ways, the deeper Teva and Tehani are drawn into the realm of the god Tangaroa.
