Spoiler alert: this article contains plot information

Honestly, All Our Shimmering Skies is the most challenging read Dalton has given me. It took me three goes to get going, which could just be me dealing with my two young kids screaming at me, or something else. It feels like an Australian film on the page but the prose dances between poetry and brutality. I do think it drags its feet, but whenever I drag my feet something interesting is always left in the dirt. The language is delicate for such a harsh setting, like birdsong and shrapnel. To me that’s new for Dalton.

I came to this one after Boy Swallows Universe – and after a few non-starts wondered if the debut was lightning in a bottle. But when I got to know Molly Hook, gravedigger’s daughter and reluctant protagonist, I felt something bigger than the previous book. All Our Shimmering Skies isn’t lightning in a bottle – it’s a whole different storm. Where Boy Swallows Universe is more suburban parable, All Our Shimmering Skies is a cinemascape of character and country.

Themes in All Our Shimmering Skies

The burden and blessing of language

For me, this book is about our mental inheritance – and what we choose to do with it. Molly carries her father’s curses like they’re tattooed to her ribs. She repeats them, believes them, battles them. Words, in this world, are weapons and maps. Every character has their own vocabulary of pain and hope and thoughts and belief.

Dalton’s words never flinch from horror, but they also create these strange pockets of wonder. That’s what Molly walks through during the book – a linguistic civil war with winners, losers and participants.

War on the outside, war on the inside

Set against the bombing of Darwin in 1942, the novel places its characters in a literal warzone. But Molly’s personal war – against self-hatred, inherited shame, spiritual erosion – is the bigger battle. The backdrop of World War II is almost secondary to the emotional shrapnel she’s trying to dig out of herself. Especially after the earth-shattering, heart-wrenching ascent into the sky of her mother (I pictured her mum as a Tilda Swinton-like creature in my brain as I was reading it).

But it makes it beautiful. The chaos you see reflects the chaos inside. It’s not just physical – it’s metaphysical. And terrifying.

Beauty as survival

There’s this stubborn thread of beauty that runs through All Our Shimmering Skies. It’s not soft or decorative -it’s defiant. Whether it’s Molly’s gift for noticing the sky, or Yukio’s art, or Greta’s resilience, there’s this recurring idea that to find beauty in horror isn’t naive – it’s radical. It’s what keeps people alive. I said this in my review of Boy Swallows Universe that Dalton finds this in all his writing, a flicked switch opposite to the emotion you’re supposed to be feeling.

Character analysis

Molly Hook

Oh, Molly. She’s 12, smart, bookish, and convinced she’s cursed. What makes her compelling is that she’s not particularly brave at the start. She’s scared, awkward, unsteady. But she goes anyway. Into the jungle. Into danger. Into the past.

What unfolds is not just a journey of survival but one of reclamation. She’s trying to get her heart back from people who told her she didn’t deserve one. I love her for that.

Greta

The showgirl with a gun and a broken heart. Greta is steely, but not without tenderness. She’s not there to fix Molly – but she walks beside her. I think Greta is one of Dalton’s best characters: complicated, hardened, still holding out for a sliver of redemption.

Yukio

The Japanese pilot moves like a ghost through the story. He’s quiet, poetic, and completely unexpected. His relationship with Molly isn’t one of saviour or antagonist – it’s something gentler. He reminds us that war makes monsters and mourners. His art becomes a way to process grief – he and Molly speak the same language.

Symbolism in All Our Shimmering Skies

The sky

The title’s no accident. The sky is always there – looming, watching, changing, giving. For Molly, it’s a canvas and a compass. It’s something bigger than her and, at times, kinder than the people she’s known. When everything on the ground is cruel, the sky offers consistency.

Graves and maps

The graveyard is Molly’s starting point, both literally and emotionally. It’s where she learned to dig and where she learned to read words and people. It’s also a symbol of what she’s been buried under – shame, cruelty, fear. The map she carries isn’t just a guide through the bush but through her trauma. She’s not just walking through the Northern Territory – she’s walking out of the narrative others have written for her.

The curse

Is it real? Does it matter? The idea of Molly being cursed drives much of her early thinking. It’s inherited, passed down like DNA. And yet, as she walks, bleeds, survives, she starts to unravel the truth: maybe the curse wasn’t real. Maybe it was just someone else’s words she didn’t know how to refute. I felt like that as a kid. Probably still as an adult to be honest. That’s what makes her win so powerful – she doesn’t just survive. She rewires.

All Our Shimmering Skies isn’t easy, but it’s necessary in Dalton’s work. It’s about walking through hell with your eyes open and still choosing to both see and keep walking. Dalton believes in the redemption of broken people.

I feel like I finished this book with dirt under my nails. Maybe from dragging my feet.