Heart of Danger

JUNO SERIES, BOOK ONE:
JUNO OF TARIS

If you haven’t already read Book One of the trilogy, here is the plot summary:

Juno believes she is the only one who hates having her head shaved bare every week, as is the custom on the island of Taris. She has so many questions about life Outside and yearns to leave her home to find out if the world still suffers from the devastation of global warming, if war still rages and if disease is rife. But contact with Outside was lost years before Juno was born and it is dangerous to ask questions on Taris.

Juno wants to make up her own dances, but the five Governance Companions, who are the leaders of the 500-strong community, discourage change or deviation from the rules and her parents forbid her. Juno can’t believe that such innocent changes would jeopardise the stability of the island.

When her sister Hera is born, Juno befriends an older girl Vima, who is prepared to listen to her. As their strong friendship develops, Juno secretly teaches her to read.

Vima agrees that many of the rules are unreasonable and decides to refuse to have her head shaved. To punish her, all except Juno withdraw from her. Then Juno also refuses to have her head shaved. The fallout splits her family and the pressure on her to obey increases.

The thirteen others in her learning stratum tell Juno they too want to rebel and grow their hair. The Governance Companions allow this small subversion, but especially Majool, Hilto and Lenna make sure that nothing much else changes.

Vima confides in Juno that she is in love with Jov, who is married and from a different learning stratum. Juno is horrified – as far as she knows such a thing has never happened before on Taris. But is what they have been told of their history the truth? Because she can now read, Vima has been discovering information on the computers in the office where she works, causing both girls to have their doubts.

Then one day they discover a secret path while taking Hera on a walk to the bay. When Juno and Vima finally get to explore it, the track leads them to a secret communication centre. Vima decides she must try to make contact with Outside.

The first Juno knows of Vima’s mission is when she is woken in the night by a text on the secret phone Vima had found in a storeroom. Vima’s text says she’s on the mountain and that she’s hurt. Juno enlists the help of her friends Silvern, Paz and Oban, who is in love with Vima, to help her rescue Vima. They climb the mountain and bring her down. She is unconscious and has lost blood. The communication centre has also been wrecked. The friends call an emergency meeting of the entire community, but they won’t let Vima be taken to the medical centre because they know that whoever smashed the communication centre will try to stop her from talking.

While Vima is lying in the middle of the arena being tended to, Hera – who often seems to know things – reveals that the older girl is pregnant. When Jov stands up to say he is the father, Hilto goes into a wild rage with devastating repercussions. Everyone wants to know if she sent the message to Outside but she can’t remember. Life goes on, but it becomes clear to the Tarians that the protective dome over their island is failing and with no help from Outside they are doomed.

Just when it seems that Taris’s time is up, Hera speaks of people coming in the big boat. Most of the islanders don’t believe her, but Oban prepares the docking gates just in case and keeps watch. Hera is right. But who will choose to go with the Outsiders, and who will choose to stay?

 

JUNO SERIES, BOOK TWO:
FIERCE SEPTEMBER

If you haven’t already read Book Two of the trilogy, here is the plot summary:

The rescue ship arrives but Willem, the leader, tells the people of Taris they must leave immediately to avoid a dangerous storm. But Juno realises her friend Vima isn’t with everyone else on the mountain top, and that her baby must be coming. She races back down the mountain to get her. When it becomes obvious that she, Vima’s parents and brother won’t be able to carry Vima up to the docking gates before the ship leaves, Juno sends a mind message to Marba who, along with seven other young men, races down to help.

Willem is furious until Hera seems to predict that rescuing Vima has been necessary for the good of Outside. Despite the fierceness of the storm, the ship and its passengers survive only to be greeted with hate and violence from a group of protestors when they arrive in Aotearoa. Worse is to come when a dangerous disease breaks out and soon the people of Taris are being accused of bringing this new pandemic.

The Taris people volunteer to help fight the pandemic. Juno’s four grandparents nurse the sick, and Grif, Juno’s beloved grandmother dies of the disease. Vima volunteers to help too and is sent to work in a lab in Wellington. She must take Wilfred with her and care for him while she works.

Sina, Jov’s wife, cannot volunteer because her baby is due imminently. Those left behind at the refugee centre find it difficult being unable to go outside, but they must obey emergency rules and stay inside.

Hera predicts that some people want to hurt Willem. Juno and her friends tell him, but he shrugs it off. Juno becomes concerned that Vima isn’t coping well with working and caring for her baby and gets permission to stay with Vima. Because Juno is on her own with a sleeping baby for most of the time, she has nothing to do but think and read her book of fairy tales. She begins to wonder if the sickness is like Sleeping Beauty and has been asleep till somebody released it intending to blame Taris. She tells Vima who then works out that the disease isn’t bacterial but is an artificial virus.

Very early one morning, Juno’s friends contact her to say Sheen and Hera are missing and they’re about to search for them. Juno goes too, not even thinking that she will be breaking quarantine. They find Sheen lying injured on the ground and Hera being threatened by a vagrant. Hera tells them she wanted to find Willem because bad people have taken him away.

Back at the Centre, Sheen is attended to. Juno, Marba, Silvern and Paz rush to get the train to New Plymouth where Willem has been taken. With the help of Mac the guard they find him drugged and unconscious.

They spend the day at Fairlands School where they discover that Taris held secrets, one of which is Thomas the ten year old son of Hilto who had wielded power on Taris.

Events move quickly once the four are back in Wellington. Juno is arrested and put on trial for breaking quarantine. A lawyer, Brighton Hainsworth, accuses her of much more serious crimes but Juno and her friends turn the tables on him when they realise he must be implicated in spreading both the virus and the rumours that Taris was to blame. He fails the lie detector test and Juno is exonerated.

The pandemic is at an end, but Vima doesn’t return immediately to the Centre, and when she does, she stuns everyone by announcing that she is going to marry James who she worked with at the lab. Juno finds it difficult to accept that Vima, who loved Jov so desperately, would even think of marrying somebody else – and an Outsider at that.

After the wedding the farewells begin as the people of Taris leave to go to jobs all over Aotearoa. They are only too aware though, that those who created the pandemic are still at large.