Reviews

The Many-Coloured Land by Julian May

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tcgoetz's review

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4.0

Rating and date for second reading.

fredalily's review

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adventurous inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I've read this book, the first of a series, 4 times. It is one of my favourite reads. It's a clever concept, with interesting characters. It's a great read.

sambooks59's review

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I picked this up at a used bookstore; it looked interesting and I’m always on the lookout for lesser known books. Or maybe forgotten books, as it was nominated for an award or two when written in the year of my birth (I think).

The first 100 pages or so were quite interesting. May introduces eight characters and a setting that kept me turning pages. The time travel aspect - you can go back to prehuman times, but it’s a one way trip - was intriguing. I was genuinely excited to see what this world was like, once the characters got there.

Sadly, this is where the book went off the rails. Apparently there are aliens living in this prehistoric world. This alone is fine. But May introduces a bunch of new characters. Our original eight are split and the last chunk only follows four of them. The book ends with a promise that we’ll get back to the other two in book two!

What!?!?

This structure fails in two ways. It means this book is not a complete narrative on its own. I’m fine with series, but each book should have its own arc. Second, rather than developing characters we simply get new ones piled on. To be fair, I quickly lost interest so maybe some development happened.

Overall, a decent premise but unsatisfactory in execution.

sepptb's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

majkia's review

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5.0

must be my tenth time through this series. Obviously I love it

corymojojojo's review against another edition

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4.0

I was really excited to start this series, I’ve heard great things and I even ordered the whole set before starting, and while I was by no means disappointed, it wasn’t as great as I was anticipating. The main issue is that it didn’t suck me in very quickly. I enjoyed the first half of the book, but with so many characters to keep track of—every chapter feels like it introduces a new character for the first 60 pages—and May’s complex vocabulary, it was a slow start. At about the halfway point, though, things clicked and I got properly swept up into the epic story (and as it turns out this is really just an incomplete part 1 to a longer story, many characters introduced are not even addressed until book 2).

The Saga of the Pliocene Exile is arguably more fantasy than science fiction, especially considering I have a hard time categorizing anything focused on psychic abilities as sci-fi, but there is some excellent creativity at play here, involving time travel, ancient aliens, space ships, all set 6 million years ago during the Pliocene epoch during an epic war between two factions. Overall I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping, but it’s still got some great things going for it, and there’s a lot more story to read in the next three books. I’m looking forward to it.

wazbar's review against another edition

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slow-paced

4.5

My biggest worry about this was that it'd lean too hard on a veneer of "hard" science believability bit I needn't have; this is pure planetary romance on a level few can match. May brings the lower pliocene to life with evident delight and love. Truly, an incredible work of imagination.

Rough spots were primarily that the characterization depends overmuch on national stereotypes. A lot of time is spent establishing a large cast of characters, and then the back half of the book focuses narrowly on a few of them; this may set up the later books in the series but it did drag in places in this one.

Content Warnings