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Beak of the Moon #1

by Philip Temple, Anna Bańkowska (Translator)

Philip Temple, znany pisarz i entuzjasta nowozelandzkiej przyrody, przedstawia polskiemu cztelnikowi kee, papugi żyjące od najdawniejszych czasów w dzikich, górskich rejonach wyspy.
Pewnego dnia spokój w dolinie zostaje zakłócony pojawieniem się dziwnych istot bez skrzydeł, a młode kee zaczynają buntować się przeciwko absolutnej władzy wodza. Autokratyczny przywódca postanawia pozbyć się trzech najbardziej zagrażających mu ptaków, wysyłając je w daleki lot. Mają znaleźć nowe tereny dla kei w nieznanym świecie za górami.
Rewelacyjna, doskonała literacko powieść, porównywalna z "Wodnikowym Wzgórzem" i cyklem "Las Dunctoński" Williama Horwooda.

Genres: Animals, Birds, Fantasy, Fiction

592 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Philip Temple is a multi prize-winning New Zealand author of fiction, non-fiction and children's books. His latest book is the adventure novel 'The Mantis' which explores why people risk all to be the first to reach the summit of an unclimbed mountain. Another new novel is due mid-year. He is also currently researching for a major biography of NZ author Maurice Shadbolt.

Philip was born in Yorkshire and educated in London but emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 18, becoming an explorer, mountaineer and outdoor educator. With Heinrich Harrer, of 'Seven Years in Tibet' fame, he made the first ascent of the Carstensz Pyramide in West Papua, one of the seven summits of the seven continents, and later sailed to sub-Antarctic Heard Island with the legendary H.W. ‘Bill’ Tilman to make the first ascent of Big Ben.

Philip's first books reflected this adventurous career and 'The World At Their Feet' won a Wattie Award in 1970. After a period as features editor for the New Zealand Listener, he became a full time professional author in 1972. Since that time he has published about 40 books of all kinds and countless articles and reviews.

In the fiction field, his nine novels include the best-selling 'Beak of the Moon', an anthropomorphic exploration of the mountain world seen through the eyes of the mountain parrot, kea. This, and its successor 'Dark of the Moon', are rated as unique in New Zealand literature. In more recent times, his Berlin-based novels 'To Each His Own' and' I Am Always With You' controversially tackle issues around German guilt and historical experience.

Philip’s non-fiction range is wide, from books about exploration and the outdoors to New Zealand history and electoral reform (MMP). His book about the Wakefield family and the early British settlement of New Zealand, 'A Sort of Conscience', was NZ Biography of the Year in 2003, and won the Ernest Scott History Prize from the University of Melbourne. Philip’s award-winning children’s books, in collaboration with wildlife artist Chris Gaskin, are unique to the genre.

Over the years, Philip has been awarded several fellowships, including the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship (1979), the Robert Burns Fellowship (1980), the 1996 NZ National Library Fellowship, a Berliner Künstlerprogramm stipendium in 1987 and the 2003 Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers Residency. In 2005, he was invested as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for Services to Literature and given a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. Following examination of his work, Philip was granted the higher degree of Doctor of Literature (LittD) by the University of Otago in 2007.

Philip Temple lives in Dunedin with his wife, poet and novelist, Diane Brown.

Reviews

[Mariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Watership Down with birds. (That's my review, pretty much. This is an out of print New Zealand book from the '80s about the lesser known kea parrots. Is anyone interested in this book?)

I was never young. I was never old. I didn't feel wonder of the new, or nostalgia of the old. Shouldn't I have? Beak of the Moon star crossed my life because of its Watership Down syndrome. Watership Down is pretty freaking great. I read it because I did want to read Watership Down again (I've read WD several times already). The whole not being me thing (not the whole exact plot. Be careful of what you wish for?). I don't want to be me at least as long as it takes to read the book (longer if I could get it). Somehow, though, when another blatantly rip-offish thing happened I'd roll my eyes over how unoriginal it was. I mean the whole story pacing and everything. "No freaking way! Two younger birds decide to leave the dictatorship and join the ragtag group of birds to find a new home? Really?!" Fiver is Glintamber, a drunken (they eat berries. This isn't Redwall where the wine flows like wine, at least) old bird. He makes prophecies and they do shit because he says so. Let's rise up, my friends! It's really vague and annoying. (I should sound vague and annoying.) When the beak of the moon... blah blah... a dark feather on the horizon... one of you will fall... One of you will betray me and one of you will deny me... blah blah. That's better than a map!
What I loved about Fiver in Watership Down is he's a tender little guy. A loser like me! Strongbeak (the Hazel) is too survival of the fittish. A cocky young cock. What a cock and bull story. Skreek is no Bigwig. I really wanted a Bigwig. (I watched the Plague Dogs cartoon on Netflix last week hoping it'd be better than it was as a book. It wasn't. Richard Adams should have kept on writing about Bigwig. If I were him I would have done that and then I'd be a way happier person than I am now.) Skreek whines and is a dicktastic little thing to his fellow birds. Lots of whining. It's Fellowship of the Ring if the whole book was Frodo being bitchy about his precious. This is not a bad analogy. Redwall it isn't but they eat a lot. Okay, I'm not being fair. Parrots LOVE to eat. Birds spend most of their day eating or looking for food (or preening their feathers or nest building. It's not vanity. Their feathers are their protection). I'm not being fair. One of the things I did like about 'Beak' is that the birds learn that they can be friends as well as followers and followees. That didn't mean I enjoyed reading about Skreek before or after said realization.

(My favorite bird gets killed too! That wasn't fair! This is not a spoiler because I didn't say who my favorite bird was.) The cutest one!

I didn't get into Beak of the Moon that much because it's about who is the best fighter, the best flyer, the best food gatherer (apart from the eventual friendship dawning... of the moon!). Yeah, yeah. I loved Watership Down because I felt like I was one of them. I'd totally have been oppressed by a mean old rabbit! It's me and Fiver against the world! The sexism is also more noticeable in Beak than it is in Watership. If I were a hen and read this book I'd have ruffled feathers for sure. Weren't they good for anything other than mating? Couldn't THEY also be good for friendship? Hmph. Here is a book jacket photo of Phillip Temple looking down his nose at hens. (He's also saying that women had the right to vote in New Zealand first. So? What about hens?!)

Now I am going to talk about real Keas because this is important.

Facts: Keas are the only alpine parrots in the world. Isn't that cool?

Keas were hunted down by big bad humans because they have been suspected of killing sheep (for food! I guess they should have made sweaters out of them?). Wikipedia has photographic evidence of said sheep killing. (I, um, didn't rip off all of my facts from wikipedia.)

Here is a description of a photo of a dead sheep. It's a sheep laying dead in the grass and it's sides have been brutally pecked away by kea beaks. Flies swarm around it. Vultures would have had the decency to wait for the sheep to be eaten mostly by wolves (they don't leave the choice bits. Keas must be smarter than vultures. [Fact: Keas can work together and have made tools to get to food. Just like those smarty pants crows!]).

Fact: Keas eat other birds.

Beak of the Moon features a scene of great horror over - gasp! - eating sheep and other birds. WE DON'T DO THAT! OH MY GOD! THE HORROR! (Fiver would have collapsed into a fit if he had forseen such an event. Glimtamber would get drunk and speak in riddles.)

What the hell kind of kea propaganda is Phillip Temple writing here?

It doesn't mesh with the survival of the fittest shit. If they are the fittest shouldn't they have the right to kill sheep just as much as the "birds with no wings" (aka men)?

Fact: There are a lot less keas flying around in New Zealand today because their government paid men to kill the threat to sheep. They shouldn't have needed a 1981 propaganda book about how wrong it was to attack keas for killing sheep. They should have said, "Hey, we don't own sheep any more than keas do." Keas are cool! We shouldn't have tried to wipe them off the face of New Zealand. Something like that.

Fact: Keas and their related brethren are the only ties to ancient parrots in the world! This is prehistoric historical shit here.

Beak of the Moon has a lot of birdy realism that I appreciated. Maybe you have to be a bird nerd like me to enjoy things like when they mill and the bird communication (birds DO talk to each other! Temple did more or less stick to how real birds behave, as Richard Adams did for rabbits. They tell stories about other birds. Maybe birds do do that? Cockatiels write songs. Why not?). Still, it wasn't as readable as Watership Down because I never forgot myself. It's too clunky with the constant descriptions of flying. If I were a bird I'd find descriptions of walking to be boring (but I don't know from Temple because he never made me feel like one of the birds!). Being birdy is a good thing but maybe it would be better to take some things for granted? You don't have to think about breathing. Birds probably don't think about it when they are flying.

Fact: Keas are bigger than african greys.

Here is a photo of an african grey: Actual size.

Fact: Keas are smaller than macaws.

Now I will post photographic evidence to back up this claim.
Macaw: Actual size.

I kinda enjoyed Beak of the Moon because I am a nerd and birds are something I get excited about. Kinda. I I would have liked it more if I had forgotten my nerdiness while reading it. And if it was Watership Down and Bigwig was in it. Long live Bigwig. (This is my summary of the review like my intro "Watership Down with birds". Pictures are worth thousands of words, you know.)

P.s. Confession: I applied for goodreads librarian status for the sole purpose of adding cover art for Beak of the Moon. I never did it before because I had assumed that you had to be something special on goodreads to get it. I'm special now! (I have more than fifty books on my goodreads shelves.)

My cover is not the one I uploaded. My cover is of a kea crying to the moon that he has grasped (it is the O in the title Moon) in his beak. It is a beak of the moon, literally. Yes!

P.s.s. I forgot to include photos of keas!

Photo #1: An olive greened Kea hovers in the sky over frosty mountain trees, the moonlight reflecting on his orange under wing feathers. The black tips successfully camoflouge him from predators. He is looking over his shoulder to cry to his fellow birds, not friends but flockmates, that it is not safe to fly higher.

Photo #2: A hungry Kea. His chest enclave is smaller than in photo #1 because he has not found any grubs to eat. Shit! What if he is forced into murdering sheep?!!!!!!! There is snow underneath his feet. He appears as if he hopped there because the indentations in the snow resemble footprints in not a straight line but here and there.

Photo #3: It's a kea's back. He says talk to the hand. It's green and forbidding. Go on and talk to it!

P.s.s.s. One of the first birds I ever cared for (a peach front conure) was named Fiver. I, uh, "casted" him in Beak of the Moon even though he is not a Kea! I also "casted" my Senegal Pagoda. That there were black and white drawings of Keas in the book did not deter me for long. The drawings are of heads of keas looming over forest and mountains. Like omnipresent keas like Glintambers! A flock (not friends. Drunks don't have friends) of Glintambers!

[... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine Watership Down but with kea parrots in New Zealand...

It follows a similar premise: with a prophecy, a great journey, an impending doom (humans!), and even creation stories. While Beak of the Moon is not as awesome as Richard Adams's classic, it's still great.


Kimi makes a goodreads cameo because he likes sitting on the book.
*I miss him*

Even if you're not interested in birds or parrots in particular, you've probably heard at one point or another about keas and just how smart they are. So while this is animal fantasy, it's grounded in science (or at least what was known about keas about 40 years ago). Based on his own observations (here's his NatGeo article about keas) and knowledge of others, Philip Temple tried to be as accurate as possible in regards to keas' behavior and ecology. So if you watched a documentary or two about keas, or read anything about them, you'll find that he succeeded (mostly!)

I've grown so fond of the main trio that I miss them already. The characters were not all bad or good, but flawed, and it was easy to form an emotional attachment to them. As for "so what's wrong with the book, then?", Beak of the Moon is a male-dominated story that suffers from too many pages (almost 600 in my edition) and not enough story. 400 pages and the plot was going nowhere. It got back on track towards the end though.

It's an enjoyable read, one I would recommend if you can find this obscure book. (Oh, but just keep in mind it's not 100% kid-friendly content.) I'd love to read the sequel, Dark of the Moon, but I can't find it anywhere. One day, perhaps!



Looking for something similar? Check out Watership Down and Fire Bringer.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book which shows us the world of the New Zealand alpine parrot, the kea, and the larger, flightless parrot the kakapo. Talking to each other, the birds are our characters.

When their home is invaded by people the birds face new challenges and have to adapt for the first time in many generations.

The environment is well described and since the birds, particularly the kakapo, are endangered species, it is good to raise awareness of their plight.

[Jane Mackay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this as a girl growing up in New Zealand and it never left me. I am excited to have found it again, after thirty years. It is on my nightstand, next in line to be read. It's probably best summed up us as a New Zealand Watership Down (which is also in the pile on my nightstand, to be re-read for the first time since childhood).

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a sucker for anything remotely similar to warrior cats. Animal protagonists with human emotions! A prophecy! An adventure to new places! Unlikely friends! Just rate it, really

Books with evil humans destroying the environment is like my go to atm, so very much enjoy being team-earth and reading through animal perspectives

I found this book from the excerpt in ‘Bird Words’

[Lemurkat · Rating 4 out of 5]

What more suitable place to read this novel than while on holiday in Fiordland? Whilst reclining in the beanbags in Milford Lodge, watching the rain stream down outside - the dark shapes of the beech trees rising in a perfectly penetrable wall, and above them sheer and rocky cliffs, streaming with waterfalls. This was my world as I read this, and this also is the kea's world.

For those not informed on New Zealand wildlife, the kea is the only alpine parrot in the world, and one of the most intelligent non-primate species that there is. This novel is rather like the Watership Down of my country (except not quite as famous). My copy originates from its first publication - in 1982, but Temple has since re-released it with a few of the facts updated as people learn more about the behaviour of these extraordinary birds. Although no dates are given, I believe this story is set in the 1870-80s or so, when farmers started colonising the valleys around Milford, burning the native tussock and replacing it with their more sheep-edible grasses. It includes the keas first experiences with human-kind, and also includes numerous extinct birds - and no mammals.

Like most realistic animal-protagonist books it is exceedingly sexist. All the main characters are male, and the role of the females seem to be to coo and beg at the more dominant males. This is excuseable - it is true kea behaviour, after all. It follows similar structures to most realistic animal books - the main character is exiled for getting a little too bolshy and trying to take on the dominant cock, with his friends he travels across the mountains to find a new home for himself, but alas, the new home has no kea and they're all males, therefore no matter how suitable (kea-kind) it is, they cannot remain there. They search, in vain, having amusing encounters with kakapo (which were plentiful at the time) and kaka. It is not a new storyline at all, but the richness of the writing, the personality of the characters, the complexity of their world all weaves together to create a captivating and spell-binding story. Added in, of course, is the fact that they are birds and the whole flying adds a new dimension (literally) to the plot. I am working on my own, rather more contemporary, kea novel and this has been something of an inspiration. My female character is going to much stronger, however!

[Yvonne Blanch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard "Beak of the Moon" as a reading on Radio NZ and was hooked. Marvellous story line with some great dialogue. Have gifted the book many time but would still love to get my hands on the audio version.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite it seeming like a New Zealand take on Watership Down I liked it, a lot

[Vulpine Intruder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A childhood favorite. Amazingly dark and strangely uplifting. New Zealand's 'Watership Down'.

[Rachel (Sfogs) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really loved this story!!

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it

[Lawrence Patchett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific. One of my favourite New Zealand books.

[Mark Newton · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nice idea, and wonderful descriptions of the landscape and bird behaviour, but the poor character development and even poorer plot make for a dull read. Temple’s over-explanation of everything from the Kea’s flight to the reasons behind arguments was hard to get through. I also wish more Te Reo Māori had been used to describe the flora and fauna, as well as avoiding adding the anglicised “s” to plurals (one Kea, two Kea, three Kea etc - there’s no such thing as Keas!)

[Felix · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed it up until the last couple of chapters. The ending was anticlimactic and I didn't get why the author threw in the sheep eating subplot out of nowhere, like what?

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s like Watership down- but not quite as good. I enjoyed it- but it seems like not quite enough happens..

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

Protect Strongbeck at all costs. This book made me feel so connected to NZ landscape. I will never be able to look at a kea again.

A little slow at some points but overall good.