The Children’s Book Council of Australia has announced its 2024 Book of the Year Awards Notables List and Eta Draconis can be found on their Older Readers Notables List – “entries in this category may be fiction, drama or poetry and should be appropriate in style and content for readers in their secondary years of schooling. Ages 13-18 years.”

In what reads as an allegory for COVID, the lyrical, introspective style of this novel depicts a half-formed moorlessness that will speak deeply to young people whose lives changed so drastically in 2020. Anchored with a strong sense of place, the atmospheric tone is bleak, but ultimately offers a hopeful note. Elora’s character rings rawly true; at times, she’s thoughtful and reflective, and in the next moment, achingly young and unworldly. This is a very literary story but with a character-driven focus that appeals, with coming-of-age themes that quite literally showcase a young person’s changing reliance from family to the wider world. The actions of the characters are believable and authentic – people respond in strange ways in a crisis, and a slow apocalypse, one in which you literally have no control over anything but how you choose to live your life, would bring out the extremes of these behaviours

CBCA