This is described as an "eco-novel" which sets up distractingly misleading expectations. It took me a long time to get my head around what it was: for the first while I was describing it as 70% someone transcribing the transactions of a fictional conference on sustainability, 30% engineering project. This isn't quite accurate (for one thing, although the characters are mostly fictional, I think the conference was actually partly real, and also it wasn't a conference, it was a much longer wānanga) but if I'd known this at the start I'd have been much less at risk of putting the whole thing down after a dozen pages out of exasperation at the blatant didactics.

Which would have been a shame because, although it's really rather bewildering as a novel from which one might expect something resembling plot, it is amazingly educational and interesting approached from the angle of what it actually is. It's like reading a "all the good bits" summary of a conference proceedings on what is a fascinating topic. We get a faithful narrative of the kōrero presented on various aspects of sustainability in Hawaii, Tahiti, Alaska, but particularly New Zealand (hence the kaitiakitanga of the title), along with entire extended book reviews and movie reviews, plus the discussions between attendees and of course the hands-on practical mahi - from collecting seaweed to building an earth oven through to the more ambitious project of a solar-powered waka traveling from Hawaii to New Zealand via Tahiti.

If at the start of the book, attempting to read it as story, I was bored and frustrated, by the end I was getting downright excited about the potential in my own garden.

(There was even a clue in text towards the end, spoken by one of the characters, as to why the author may have chosen this drama-less form for a novel. If so, I can see the point. But the experience of reading it was super-weird.) ( )