'Del lives in a world of many skies: by passing through the Hoops embedded in the ground, her people can walk freely between land that lies beneath a new set of constellations for every circuit they make around the edge of a Hoop.
'When archaeologists find a copy of the famed Book of All Skies, Del takes delivery of the manuscript in her role as conservator at the Museum of Apasa, hoping it will shed light on the fate of the Tolleans, the ancient civilisation that produced it. But when the book is stolen, the theft sets in motion a series of events that will see her travelling farther than she had ever imagined possible, and her understanding of her world and its history irrevocably transformed.' (Publication summary)
'Browsing the shelves of fiction at the renovated Marrickville library, a reader’s attention is drawn to the icon taped onto the spine. A heart for romance, a dragon for fantasy, a ringed planet for science fiction, a detective for noir, a kangaroo for Australian fiction, an Aboriginal flag for Indigenous fiction, and on, and on. It is necessarily reductive; how can you distil a whole field to a single symbol? Classification systems like these cannot account for boundary-crossing fiction, nor for subgenre, nor for texts that subvert genre expectations. And if a novel is both Australian and science fiction, which category is considered the most appropriate, the more important, to be put on the spine, and who is it that makes these decisions? What does it mean for a novel to be marked and marketed in this way, and how is it effected in so-called Australia? And when a novel is designated a genre, how does this affect a reader’s encounter with it?' (Publication summary)
'Browsing the shelves of fiction at the renovated Marrickville library, a reader’s attention is drawn to the icon taped onto the spine. A heart for romance, a dragon for fantasy, a ringed planet for science fiction, a detective for noir, a kangaroo for Australian fiction, an Aboriginal flag for Indigenous fiction, and on, and on. It is necessarily reductive; how can you distil a whole field to a single symbol? Classification systems like these cannot account for boundary-crossing fiction, nor for subgenre, nor for texts that subvert genre expectations. And if a novel is both Australian and science fiction, which category is considered the most appropriate, the more important, to be put on the spine, and who is it that makes these decisions? What does it mean for a novel to be marked and marketed in this way, and how is it effected in so-called Australia? And when a novel is designated a genre, how does this affect a reader’s encounter with it?' (Publication summary)
