About The Aotearoa Series
The Aotearoa Series is a teen fantasy series set in New Zealand. It switches between modern New Zealand, and a magical parallel world named ‘Aotearoa’, where mythic beings and the ghosts of dead New Zealanders and people from our past reside. Aotearoa is beautiful and scary, a place of unspoiled natural beauty, but also of dark shadows and creatures from our worst fears. A place where dragon-like taniwha swim the lakes and rivers, extinct creatures like the moa roam the forests, and long-dead Maori tribes still dwell in hill-forts. A place where settlers from our early history still grapple with a new and untamed land.
The series follows the exploits of young Matiu Douglas, a part-Maori boy from Napier, whose life becomes entangled with the secret conflicts of Aotearoa. When he suddenly finds himself the target of an age-old evil magician, he must flee or die. His journey from fugitive to hero will change Aotearoa and our own world.
Titles in The Aotearoa Series
For Matiu Douglas, apprentice tohunga, the ultimate test of his skill, courage and magical prowess awaits. Hine-nui-te-po, Goddess of Death, is calling and from all across Aotearoa, those who dream of power and immortality are gathering for the struggle. Mat and his friends must face old enemies and new as they seek to prevent the destruction of a city and the inexorable rise of evil. To succeed will bring immortality, power and the love of the goddess. To fail is to die, and doom the land.
Return to Aotearoa, where past, present, myth and magic dwell together in one timeless, unforgettable place.
Reviews for Magic and Makutu
They say the past is another country. Some people can go there.
It’s not been an easy time for Matiu Douglas, magical adept. One of his friends is now a ghost, his enemies have stolen the Treaty of Waitangi, he can’t date the girl he likes and keeps getting unwanted marriage proposals from a centuries old tohunga’s daughter.
But when his best friend Riki is snatched into the ghost-world of Aotearoa during a school visit, Mat has to put all his worries aside and act fast. For Riki vanished at Parihaka, scene of one of the darkest acts from New Zealand’s colonial past, and in Aotearoa such places are deadly dangerous.
Award-winning author David Hair takes you back to Aotearoa, where people from our past rub shoulders with beings of myth and legend, and you never know who or what lies in wait.
Reviews for Ghosts of Parihaka
Matiu Douglas’s father Tama is a defence lawyer, a job that has cost him the love of his wife. Mat is used to his father’s job creating stress, but when Tama takes on a high-profile case in magical Aotearoa — the defence of Donna Kyle and her deadly father Asher Grieve — family tensions run high.
Then Asher and Donna escape, and Mat and friends find themselves drawn into a manhunt; the consequences of which will be deadly. In lawless Russell, the ‘Hell-hole of the Pacific’, strange alliances will be forged, deadly rivalries emerge, and death will stalk the Ghost-Worlds.
Aotearoa demands justice. Or utu — revenge.
Reviews for Justice and Utu
Everyone thinks Ngatoro-i-rangi is long dead, but Matiu Douglas knows he’s alive: because he hears the legendary tohunga’s voice inside his head!
With exams approaching, all Mat really wants to do on his break in Taupo is a bit of study, and catch up with his magical mentor, Aethlyn Jones. But the secret struggle of the warlocks to dominate the hidden land of Aotearoa is spilling into modern New Zealand, and nowhere is safe. The warlocks are seeking Te Iho - The Heart - Puarata’s secret powerbase. Find it and they will hold sway in both worlds.
When Jones is attacked and a fellow protégé kidnapped, Mat finds himself caught up in a deadly no-holds-barred struggle, on a path to Te Iho that is littered with death.
Reviews for The Lost Tohunga
Related articles and downloads
- Storylines Notable Books YA Fiction List, 2011
When Matiu Douglas and his friends defeated Puarata, the tohunga makutu, they thought they’d won the war. Instead they started one. Now his warlocks are fighting for supremacy in a violent struggle spreading across the magical land of Aotearoa and into our world. The outcome will be determined by the taniwha Mat has promised to save.
But Mat is about to discover no-one can be trusted when your enemies have already mastered powers he has barely begun to learn. Can loyalty and friendship prevail over centuries-old evil?
In The Bone Tiki, David Hair began a cycle of compelling, action-packed fantasy novels, steeped in the mythology and history of New Zealand, that will terrify and captivate readers of all ages.
Reviews for The Taniwha's Tear
Related articles and downloads
- Winner: Best First Book, 2009 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards
- Storylines Notable Books YA Fiction List, 2010
What do you do when you meet a tohunga makutu? You run.
When reality dissolves and myths and legends come alive? You run faster.
And when the dead come to life and blood debts have to be paid, will you have the courage to do what must be done?
Matiu Douglas has a bone tiki he stole from a tangi. His father’s important new client wants it. Badly. And he has some very nasty friends. When Mat is forced to flee for his life, an unexpected meeting with a girl called Pania sets his world spinning. Suddenly he’s running through the bush with a girl-clown, a dog who is way too human, and a long-dead warrior. Fearful creatures from legend are rising up around him, and Mat faces a terrifying ordeal.
And there is nowhere left to hide . . . not even in another world.