Bøker av Gerald R Knight

The Legends of Lainjin series concludes in the pre-contact city of Nahn Madol. The aging hero Lainjin sails there from his home on Lae Atoll, pursuing his daughter and Ijokelekel, a young man with bold plans to lead a revolt in Pohnpei. When Lainjin arrives, he discovers that the city, now ruled by a tyrannical leader, has changed.Although multiple oral versions of Ijokelekel's story exist, all conclude that he ended the reign of the Saudeleurs, the hereditary rulers of Pohnpei.Pohnpeians settled this area around 2,000 years ago, and Nahn Madol -"the ancient Venice of the Pacific"- was built between AD 800 and 1500. For centuries, Saudeleurs ruled over the city, once a thriving crossroads with 129 structures built with gigantic basaltic crystals cleaved from the cliffs of Pohnpei island. The islanders transported these multi-ton crystals by raft to a reef flat off the island's east coast, where the canals between these mammoth structures could flood with the tides. This ancient city, now a National Historic Landmark, still exists and can be visited.

The prequel to Man Shark, this is the story of Lainjin's outrigger search for his mother, who was lost at sea in a typhoon the moon after his birth. The Pacific is an enormous expanse; how is he to find her amid all the possibilities? How does he even know if she survived? His search leads him to Pohnpei and the famous stone village of Nan Madol, where he faces distractions but is befriended by survivors of her lost fleet. They lead him across the treacherous equator where the trade winds of the northern and southern hemispheres join in breathless calm. At great personal expense, they show him where they saw her last.Be ready for an emotional journey as Lainjin travels back in space and time to the pre-historic home of his ancestors and meets his destiny awash with blood, loyalty, and ignoble revenge.

There is a single story amid the extensive oral literature of the Marshall Islanders that uncharacteristically has no ending. Tarmalu leaves her baby in the care of others while she leads her fleet of proa from the shelter of the Wotho Atoll lagoon out into the open ocean to save their craft from the certain destruction of an oncoming typhoon. She is never heard from again. Her son, Lainjen, grows up in an epic search for her and creates a renowned navigational chant to record the seamarks along the way. It is never told if he finds her.Man Shark is the first book of a multigenerational story that attempts to complete this untold tale. In this series, Gerald R. Knight retells many of the classic mythologies translated in Man This Reef, this time in his own words woven into the cultural setting of his novel.