"Only heaven knows, there were millions of people throughout the world who either offered pigs as sacrifices to their Gods, or the first grain of the new season's crop. There were even others who offered their own people to the Gods. Now the day has come when modern man had become the new face of God, and simply sacrificed the whole earth [...] It was hell to pay to be living the warfare of modernity like dogs fighting over the lineage of progress against their own quiet whorls of time."

Anthologies are very hard to rate, and this one (with 22 short stories) did vary a lot in how much each story appealed to me personally. However, I gave each a rating out of 5 which averaged out to a high 3.75! I also thought they were sequenced well by Mykaela Saunders thematically. Speculative fiction is clearly difficult to write - whilst I know each author had messages, themes and intentions they intended to explore, I did not understand several of these stories. Often I enjoyed the unique format, setting or lens the authors used in their writing, rather than reading simply for 'understanding' or from an 'informative' point of view. Things are often more complicated than that.

I know this collection holds so much significance within the literary landscape as the first-ever anthology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speculative fiction. The wit, satire, grief, connection to ancestors, Country and culture conveyed by each writer was genuinely phenomenal. As a non-Indigenous "Australian" settler, I have lived on Indigenous land my entire life and each time I visit the bush I recognise its beauty and significance in our ecosystem, something which I will probably never have the depth of understanding that many of these authors do due to their 60,000 years of ongoing culture and mutual reciprocity to the land.

Many of these stories manipulated speculative fiction conventions to explore colonisation, poverty, tokenism under the guise of inclusion, overt and implicit racism, capitalism, a distrust of colonisers, climate change (which became a central theme in the last few stories) - while centring on its impact on Indigenous people, land, the environment. They leaned more dystopian, heavy and dark overall, but they were some lovely pockets within which delved into living on Country; fishing, practising culture, cooking food, using the stars as a guide, camping. 🌱🏕️ Overall, a very valuable collection that I would recommend! I may not have liked or understood each piece of work but I did not feel as though any author wrote a weak story.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ favourites: Nimeybirra by Laniyuk Water by Ellen Van Neervan Terranora by Mykaela Saunders The Purple Plains by Archie Weller