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Item Condition: Used; Very Good
FTER the great success of Long Pig
Russell Foreman continues the life
of Oliver Slater as it leads him and
his men back to a setting of dark festival
and passion. Mr Foreman's old readers will
need no reminder of his colourful, active
world - and his new ones short intro-
duction.
From the cell of an Australian prison in
1805 Oliver Slater feels small hope of ever
returning to the Fiji Islands to find his son
and his treasure of sandalwood. But the
arrival and subsequent release of an
American sailor, Peter Bedford, gain Slater
his freedom and a ship.
The Union, like the Argo in Russell Fore-
man's first novel, does not survive the perils
of the reefed Pacific, and those who escape
to Sandalwood Island can only rely upon
the friendship of Slater with Rawaike, the
chief of a cannibal tribe, to protect their
lives. This is a powerful bond until Matt
Keig, whose rapacity cannot be limited to
sandalwood, breaks a tribal tabu. The
resulting conflict fits in well with the plans
of Solomon Doyle, Slater's enemy from the
Argo, who in a ncar-by island is abetting a
rival tribe to make war on Rawaike. But on
either side the white man, in spite of his
greater reason, is dominated by the primi-
tive daemon he cannot control.