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  • All Our Shimmering Skies

  • By: Trent Dalton
  • Narrated by: Ruby Rees
  • Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (1,230 ratings)

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All Our Shimmering Skies

By: Trent Dalton
Narrated by: Ruby Rees
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Publisher's Summary

The author of Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton returns with All Our Shimmering Skies - the best-selling, critically acclaimed novel destined to become another Australian classic.

"A glinting, big-hearted miracle of a book." (Richard Glover)

"A work of shimmering originality and energy, with extraordinary characters and a clever, thrilling plot...unputdownable." (Sydney Morning Herald)

Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain down, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger's daughter, turns once again to the sky for guidance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer who put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress, and Yukio, a fallen Japanese fighter pilot. Run, Molly, run, says the daytime sky. Run to the vine forests. Run to northern Australia's wild and magical monsoon lands. Run to friendship. Run to love. Run. Because the graverobber's coming, Molly, and the night-time sky is coming with him. So run, Molly, run.

All Our Shimmering Skies is a story about gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth and the secrets we bury inside ourselves. It is an odyssey of true love and grave danger, of darkness and light, of bones and blue skies; a buoyant, beautiful and magical novel abrim with warmth, wit and wonder; and a love letter to Australia and the art of looking up.

"Dalton is an author of 19th-century expansiveness, one with a sense that intelligence, talent for characterisation and sheer narrative brio can still be the whole cloth of the writer's ambition...it is storytelling manna, fallen straight from the Territorian skies." (The Australian)

"Achingly beautiful and poetic in its melancholy, All Our Shimmering Skies is a majestic and riveting tale of curses and the true meaning of treasure." (Booklist, starred review)

"As Australian as outback red dirt and as universal as the sky young Molly Hook's journey takes place beneath, All Our Shimmering Skies is an open-hearted wonder, by turns heartbreaking and full of hope, no less than an instant classic." (Venero Armanno)

"Australia has a new literary hero. Molly Hook - part Cordelia, part Jo March, part Pippi Longstocking - pulls us into a story and a landscape that is mythic, beguiling and almost hallucinatory in its beauty. And instantly recognisable as our own." (Kristina Olsson)

"This is storytelling at its absolute purest, a truly courageous expression of longing, hope and love...against unimaginable odds." (Asher Keddie)

"All Our Shimmering Skies is the follow-up to Boy Swallows Universe we could have never imagined, but the one Dalton was destined to gift us. It's a story of heroes and villains, foxes and water buffalo, fighter planes and birds of prey, real magic and real love, epitaphs and aphorisms, lost treasure and lost life. It's a love letter to the nation. It's your favourite childhood adventure story dictated by Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and William Shakespeare, with a score by Franz Liszt. It's dead serious. It's completely ridiculous. It's all of these things and more." (Booktopia)

©2020 Trent Dalton (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

What listeners say about All Our Shimmering Skies

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Joy
  • 19-10-2020

Great from start to finish!

Everything about this story was unique. Didn't want it to end. The narrator was brilliant. It would make a great movie. Can't wait till Trent Dalton's next one.
Bring it on!

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant

Well written
Gripping
Heavy themes,well handled
Enjoyed it immensely
Had to turn it off sometimes to have a rest
Great characters
A history lesson as well

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1 person found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

expected more

not as engaging as the first book, partly due to the narration, but also the plot outcome. Read as a series of events on the way to the finale.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Trent Dalton does it again

My favourite author hands down. Utterly original Iconic Australian story telling Heartfelt and so moving

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great second novel

I loved this book! It is even better than Trent’s first novel “Boy Swallows Universe “.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant

Loved this book. So beautifully written. Love the characters! I was a huge Boy swallows universe fan and this 2nd book was better. The narration was amazing! Best audio book this year

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Molly, Molly, Molly.

What a character, absolute corker. I found the story over descriptive at times but all in all thoroughly enjoyable.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Enjoyable fable come adventurous journey

This story slowly unfolds and is t time heartbreaking and joyous. It reminds us of the bad and good in people - it also makes us consider the impact of our actions on children or the vulnerable. While Molly is not vulnerable and strong - she certainly come out stronger, more loved and loving from her journey into nature.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful, stunning

I loved every page of it and the narrator made the story ten times better!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Not as good as Boy Swallows Universe.

Too much violence for me. Long. Beautiful descriptions of Darwin and Litchfield Litchfield National park

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.