Children of the Sun

by David Crookes

The search for the legendary Great South Land began in 1557 when Alvaro de Mendaña led the first Spanish voyage of exploration deep into the uncharted waters of the South Pacific. In his wake came the English corsairs, Francis Drake and the bloodthirsty Thomas Cavendish, commissioned by Queen Elizabeth to seek out Terra Australis and plunder Spanish interests anywhere in the world. Then came the Dutch and the Portuguese. But Terra Australia eludes them all. Tumara and Naomi are the Children of the Sun, the last of a tribe of South Sea Islanders, forced to flee their idyllic island home by European encroachment into the Pacific. They are the only two people alive who know where Terra Australis lies and they seek sanctuary there, hoping to start a new life. But their hopes are shattered when they are separated and enslaved by Mendaña and Drake and taken to Spain and England. Eventually their love and determination reunites them and they return to the South pacific only to find themselves caught in the crossfire of a desperate power struggle by European nations for supremacy in the region and a renewed search for Terra Australis.

Genres: Fiction, Australia

481 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 21, 2010

Reviews

[Nurina Malinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book that I finished read when I was study in Australia, and also the first time I memorizes Spanish language Madre de Dios. 😊

[Mercia McMahon]

A historical fiction of massive proportions about a Polynesian seafarer Tumara from what appears to be Niu in modern Tuvalu, but little of the novel is set there. The novel tries a bit too hard to fit Tumara into too many story-lines of the 16th/17th century maritime wars between Spain and England. On the plus side a story is created, which is a bonus over so much historical fiction that merely adds a bit of dialogue to what the history books say.