The Moons of Palmares

Lois Provost Turchetti is a professional children’s storyteller (in
English and Caribbean Creole), who also conducts educational workshops
in Toronto.

This futuristic tale of exploitation is modeled on the histories of
developing nations. Seismic changes brought on by gravitational shifts
have left the planet Palmares on the verge of physically breaking up, a
metaphor for the planet’s ideological divisions. “We need to take
what we can use ... whatever lets people be connected—related—to
each other,” Zaria Breiche, the half-Terran, half-Palmaran dancer and
member of the secret Kituhwa resistance explains to Major Eagle-feather,
the new Chief of Security for the Peacekeeping Forces on Palmares.

Amadahy utilizes time-honored metaphors to relate the problems of
nationhood: mining as raping and pillaging the land; and Palmarans as
virtual slaves, the result of centuries of multicultural experimentation
and voluntary DNA manipulation. The journey of nationhood is further
complicated by “worldism,” stereotypes, and propaganda about the
mythicized enemy.

Though the relationship between Eaglefeather and Breiche is somewhat
predictable, this novel is successful in its utilization of archetypes
that reflect the patterns of developing nations and the rise of new hope
based on feminine models of power. In an imperfect world, Breiche and
Eaglefeather conclude, “The real revolution begins when the fighting
stops.” As with neocolonialism, the danger remains that home rule will
“become the new exploiter.”