“a rich and raw homage to her father, a deeply moving and personal reflection on his death interwoven with poignant descriptions of a daughter’s grief and family trauma… Avia’s use of language is unflinchingly precise and cleanly crafted, evoking sharp imagery.”

- Gina Cole

‘‘A welcome autopsy of colonisers in past and present times, penned with a scalpel’s precision, the inspection of parts, minced down to the floor. Sit in your blood-splattered apron and feel as the verdict is read.'
—Ali Cobby Eckermann

‘a culture hitherto sidelined steps to centrestage... Samoa is the Other, a place of differences, and Avia, moving between two cultures while only half belonging to each of them, is our guide to its songs, jokes, customs, clothes, food and games. With her cool mocking style, her marvellous mimicry, her implied critiques of both neocolonialism and globalisation, she is an irresistible multicultural strategist. . . . the stories in these poems, told by a multitude of speaking characters, hold your fascinated attention.’
—David Eggleton, NZ Listener

'With exquisite poise in every aspect of its poetic execution, The Savage Coloniser Book is a torch that sets alight hundreds of years of racist kindling that has been gathering under the oppressive yoke of colonisation . . . and lets it burn.'
—Leilani Tamu, Kete

'an urgent, politicised collection, which finds eloquent ways to dramatise and speak out against horrors, injustices and abuses, both domestic and public. The poems are tough, sensuous, often unnerving. Prose poems, pantoums, short lyrics, list poems, hieratic invocations: the passionate voice holds all these together. We teleport between geographies and cultures, Samoa to Christchurch, Gaza to New York. The world we think we know is constantly made strange, yet disconcertingly familiar; the unfamiliar seems normal, close to home.'
—Judges' comments, 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards

'At turns satiric and surreal, mixing ancient lore with modern perception, Avia has set herself an ambitious undertaking in this new and comprehensive work. Sometimes funny, at others frightening, the central figure of the story manages to survive a turbulent upbringing to tell the tale with much imaginative power and candid, brutal, yet beautiful, narration. Some of the imagery and conceits are startling while the language is frank and forceful. This is a tour de force.'
—Peter Dornauf, Waikato Times