Salt & Gool, by Maurice Gee

Maurice Gee is a New Zealand author who had escaped my notice despite his impressive body of work.  He's written books for adults, teens, and children.

This month I read the first two novels of his yet-to-be-completed Salt trilogy.   I loved the first one.  It's situated in a dystopian colonial society where the native population are kept in squalour and used as slave labour.  These two ethnic groups are reminiscent of the British and the Maori, although Salt takes place in an alternate world with its own history, technology, and native species.

Salt brings together Hari, a grimly single-minded native boy, with Pearl, a privileged girl from one of the ruling families.  She is escaping a forced marriage to a despicable but powerful man, while he seeks to save his father from Deep Salt, the most mysterious and dreaded of the work sites.  What they discover is worse than they could have imagined.

Gool is an unusual sequel.  It picks up sixteen years after Salt left off, with (SPOILER) Pearl and Hari's children.  A new threat has entered their world, and they are sent on their own quest to avert what amounts to the end of life.

I wasn't as fond of Gool as of Salt.  I was quite attached to Hari and it took  some time for me to adjust to new protagonists who weren't as interesting as he had been.  I found the story itself less compelling as well.  Certain plot elements felt contrived, with answers coming too easily.  It involved less exploration of society and emphasized more of the mystical and fantastical elements of the story than its predecessor.  This might please some readers, but it wasn't what had attracted me to the first novel.  Nevertheless, I'll be keeping my eyes open for when the third book hits the market.