The Water Orchids of Cocoanut Palm Island – Gloria T. August

Rating: 5 stars

The good: The story is another Olive and Violet Bright adventure, quick moving, educational and entertaining.

The bad: Judith and Jack aren’t to be found in the story, but the story makes it up with new characters.

The long: The third book of the series outlines some expectations for what we can see in the future. By that I mean that all three books are different. It’s the shortest so far, and it’s set when the Brights and friends have grown up. One book is set in England while they were little, one is ambiguous in Hong Kong, and this is near Tahiti as adults. I like how this is done, that it allows different stories to be told while invoking at the same time a certain amount of familiarity.

Anyway, onto the book at hand. The gang are all working at the Pacific Research Institute, a means of uniting the many islands of that region. It is the inaugural mission, and Olive and Violet Bright work with local populations to figure out the mystery behind the resurfacing of an ancient blight, the beautiful Water Orchid. It’s consuming enormous quantities of water and is going to destroy the environment and the food chain of the Cocoanut Palm Island.

The book, much like its predecessors, spends a great amount of time educating us about the ways of life of Tahiti and similar cultures. The author also frequently uses native words and language to explain the situation. It’s an impulse I greatly appreciate because I know that it would be impossible to understand Italian culture and way of life without the language. The ultimate message is one about the mistakes of colonialism, the idiocy of the ‘noble savage’ stereotype and the power of unity. It is a great read, but it ends fast. I look forward to the future books in the series.