there’s a lot to like in Gwalia, Llŷr Titus’s Welsh-language science fiction novel for children, published in 2015. while it didn’t totally come together for me — which is to say, while I don’t think I would have loved this book as a child — it did leave me excited for his more recent work for adults, especially his 2023 dark fantasy novel Anfadwaith, because this was a promising debut. frankly, I didn’t really process the fact that this was a children’s book when I bought it, but children’s sci-fi is deeply underappreciated (in point of fact most of my favorite books prior to about 2001 were children’s sci-fi, not fantasy, though I then became more of a fantasy reader) and I’m glad I picked it up anyway.
Gwalia is narrated through the perspective of Elan, a ten-year-old girl who has grown up on an interstellar cargo ship, the Gwalia, raised by the members of its crew. she doesn’t know who her parents were; she’s been told she’ll find out when she’s older. early in the novel, two brothers Elan got into a fight with, Milo and Rob, stow away aboard the Gwalia, and much to her dismay they’re invited to stay aboard, as long as they’re willing to work. when the ship decides to investigate a mysterious planet from a centuries-old message they’ve accidentally come into possession of, Elan, Milo, and Rob are separated from the crew and must trek across the planet to the strange structure they saw as they were crashing. faced with increasingly unsettling events, they ultimately discover the truth about the planet and are reunited with the Gwalia.
the highlight here is that Titus has a lot of fascinating concepts that he’s trying to weave together. the most notable, to me, is the revelation that Milo and Rob are not — exactly — older brother and younger brother, as Elan assumed based on their apparent ages, but twins: the near-light-speed ship they were traveling on had an accident and broke in half, with Rob’s section continuing to travel at high speed such that Milo now appears to be four years older than his twin. this is genuinely incredibly cool and I would have loved to see it developed more, but unfortunately the book doesn’t really dwell on it after Elan finds out. to some extent this is because it’s a children’s novel, but also, you know, I grew up on Animorphs, so I know children’s science fiction can do the kind of high-concept and darker stuff that adult sci-fi does.
mainly, though, Gwalia is focused on the more or less linear progression of its narrative, so it doesn’t belabor this point. in some ways this is a bit of a bummer, but the upside is that it also doesn’t resolve the question of Elan’s parentage: it’s mentioned in passing, but frankly Elan doesn’t seem especially concerned about it. this is a refreshing change of pace for speculative stories about orphans of mysterious parentage! we’re explicitly told that she regards the crew of the Gwalia as her family, and she seems genuinely basically content with that. she’s curious about her biological parents, but in kind of the same way that she’s curious about everything. which makes sense! the crew seem to be basically caring and supportive, her emotional and physical needs are fulfilled, and she has a high degree of independence (even if she’s not allowed to have a cat), and it seems like this kind of (pseudo-)familial relationship is unremarkable in the space future, so why should she be Bothered about her biological parents except as a point of curiosity?
the main thing that makes me think I wouldn’t have loved this as a child, though, even if I liked it, is just that the narration of Elan, Milo, and Rob’s journey across the planet doesn’t have the kind of survival element that I liked as a child, particularly in several of the Star Trek children’s novels I read. while Rob does fall into cold water at one point, once he’s rescued there’s very little urgency in the narrative — they appear to have plenty of supplies from the escape pod they were in, they’ve got a tent for shelter, they don’t seem to have trouble finding fuel for fires, and so on. the narrative focuses instead on the strangeness of the planet, which appears to respond directly to their thoughts in some way, but while certain aspects of this were effectively unsettling, others were just silly, which really undercut the vibe for me: they end up with (literal) “cowboy hats” and a horse to transport them to the structure they’re traveling towards. this is on top of the Gwalia delivering cattle to a farm planet — I guess — called “Kansas”.
the overall inconsistency of tone combined with the very linear narrative are what held me back from really loving the book. there were some places where the writing faltered a bit or got a bit repetitive, but overall the style was engaging, and I don’t think I would have felt it was talking down to me, which is crucial for a children’s book. I don’t know that I would necessarily buy the book for a child, but I would get it for them from the library.
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