I got a free copy of this from the publisher, as I'm reviewing it for Strange Horizons - review out shortly, this is just a quick comment here for my own records.

I'm a huge horror fan, no surprises there. And this book works off one of the classic horror tropes: teens alone in the wilderness, and something is killing them off. Great! (Especially as some of them seem to deserve it.) And it's set in the New Zealand bush, and I always enjoy speculative fiction set in the surroundings I'm familiar with. I don't want to give too much away plot-wise, though I will say it's rather a complicated plot, though very effectively told. Matuku follows a number of storylines, focusing on different kids and the company working against them, and it's all done so seamlessly that there's never any confusion. I love prose like that, where it looks so deceptively simple but there's so much going on underneath, and she's done really well there. There is one aspect of the story I don't find particularly convincing - I don't believe for a single second that DOC and Search and Rescue would be so easily fobbed off searching for those kids, or that media and the general public would go along with it - but let's face it, I'm mostly here for the horror. And there's a lot of creepy fantastic images in this book to make me happy.

I got a strong impression, while reading, that Flight of the Fantail is eminently filmable, and if it's not turned into a movie at some stage I'll be amazed. I'd certainly go watch it!