Eta Draconis by Brendan Ritchie | Review

The resilience of two sisters on a dystopian road trip

Title: Eta Draconis

Author: Brendan Ritchie

Publisher: UWA Publishing

Released: May 14, 2023

This review contains mild spoilers.

Eta Draconis is a simple story of two sisters on a road trip from Esperance to Perth. Much of the novel is slice of life… except for the meteors crashing to Earth, of course. For the most part it’s a slow book (but not in a bad way), which makes me think if you’re new to dystopian fiction and just dipping your toes in the water, this might be a good one to start with.

Sisters Elora and Vivienne have very different reactions to the apocalyptic event that is Eta Draconis, but together they embark on the drive to university in the city from Esperance, encountering people and situations along the way.

Elora and Vivienne felt so realistic in so many ways, which is definitely what contributed to such a compelling story for me. I saw myself in both the girls - Vivienne’s urge to be in the city and continue as if Draconis isn’t happening, and Elora’s questioning of the point of her arts degree - and I also saw my own relationship with my sister and I. Though the girls were different, their lives kept a bit separate as you tend to do with family members, they still love each other and are there for each other. Their resilience - the courage to push on to the city - was so inspiring and really made me wonder what I would be like if I were in their situation. Being of a similar age and also living in WA made it a little too easy to imagine… But again, it really helped in feeling connected to the characters.

I was really drawn to Elora’s questions about studying theatre and drama when the world is crumbling. I think a lot of artists (I definitely did, anyway) had similar thoughts about the validity and sustainability of their artistic practice during COVID, when much funding and support was dropped. Brendan Ritchie’s discussions about art during global disasters are my favourite.

If the rocks came for them now it would be by tree or by stone. Yet Elora knew that wolves had no agency in this place of fiction and fantasy. They could breach every valley, planet and galaxy, but not every world.

Seeing WA on the page is always so thrilling for me, and the settings and the road were easy to imagine - especially when I finished this after being in Margaret River for the Readers and Writers Festival, where this book happened to be launched! But it wasn’t so WA-specific that the book is inaccessible to other readers, which I really liked. Carousel and Beyond Carousel were very recognisably WA suburbs but Eta Draconis is a bit softer in its approach.

I enjoyed every page of Eta Draconis; it’s a must for Australian YA dystopian fans.