‘Savage is as savage does. And we’re all implicated. Avia breaks the colonial lens wide open. We peer through its poetic shards and see a savage world – outside, inside. With characteristic savage and stylish wit, Avia holds the word-blade to our necks and presses with a relentless grace. At the end, you’ll feel your pulse anew.’
—Selina Tusitala Marsh

‘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