YMMV / Nation

• Complete Monster: First Mate Cox is described as a man who lives to hurt others. Frequently shooting things just to kill something, Cox murders an old man in a canoe just because he can, later attempting a mutiny to wipe out any crew not loyal to him. Later taking over a cannibal tribe by killing its king, Cox attempts to massacre the other people on Nation before facing young Mau in a Duel to the Death, trying to feed him to the nearby sharks.
• Fridge Brilliance: Locaha is portrayed as more callous than Pterry's usual depictions of Death (by whatever name). This is a double case of brilliance, as A) Mau, if he's only imagining Locaha, has lost everyone he's ever known and is unlikely to imagine Death as anything but callous, and B) if Locaha is for real, then as this Verse's Death, he's just recently been very very busy dealing with the consequences of both a massive pandemic and a devastating tsunami, so probably isn't inclined to be sociable right now.
• Iron Woobie: Mau. He starts off with his whole tribe dying in a tidal wave, after which he goes BSOD while preparing their bodies for dolphinhood. He almost drowns himself. He almost drowns himself again while saving Daphne. After this, his catchphrase/Survival Mantra becomes "Does Not Happen", and he proceeds to become the badass leader of the emerging tribe. It is stated by other characters that he works himself too hard and doesn't eat or sleep (which nearly kills him), because he's that goddamn traumatised. At night he guards the Nation by standing on the beach with a spear. Who is he expecting? The freaking god of death. Whom he meets. Temporarily.
• Squick:
  • Pig. Milk. Specifically, what Mau had to do to get the pig's milk, namely cover himself in stinking mud, wriggle close to a sow (which he'd gotten drunk with beer-laced vegetables), and then put his mouth to the sow's muddy, stinking belly and suck out mouthfuls of milk, because pigs don't have udders you can milk by hand.
  • Doubles as a Moment of Awesome for Mau, because he was perfectly aware all the time just how disgusting the act was... and he still did it, because the alternative was having an innocent baby starve to death. Then, knowing exactly what it was like, he did it again.
• Stoic Woobie: Daphne's father, who lost his wife and baby son tragically, and must put up with his tyrannical mother running both his and his daughter's lives as well. He works all day and half the night as a distraction from his own pain, and takes a job halfway around the world in search of a place where he can find some peace. Then his daughter disappears in a tidal wave, and 137 of his relatives die of plague (and one, of lions).
• Tear Jerker:
  • Mau's response to finding out everyone on the island died in the wave, leaving him as the only survivor. He starts preparing their bodies in Heroic Safe Mode for Locaha, and pulls Daphne from drowning while in this mode.
  • Daphne and the coffin memories (which are somehow edited by Mrs. Gurgle to make them better and reunite the baby with his mother).
  • The scene where Daphne and Mau have to say goodbye. They have both agreed that getting together is impractical due to being children. Yet, they both feel sad that after months of bonding and rebuilding Mau's people, she has to go and be a princess. The children hearing the story feel this in-universe and protest that surely the two reunited, at least in death.
• Toy Ship: Daphne and Mau are only young teenagers when the story starts, which Daphne keeps lampshading.

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