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A review by coepi
Otherlands by Thomas Halliday
4.0
I received a copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Otherlands has been described as vivid, evocative, and cinematic, and I can see why thanks to Halliday’s incredible writing style. The prose really made me feel transported to the various places and eras of geological time covered, and immersed in the intricate webs of life in these worlds. That said, I did feel at some points that more illustrations would have been a useful addition; some of the prehistoric organisms, ecosystems, and landscapes are so unlike anything that exists today that it strained my imagination to try and picture them. However, I’ll concede that I’m not a very visual person, so this may be less of an issue for other readers.
I felt the strongest chapters in the book were the middle chapters - far enough back in time that it felt instantly different to our own time, but not so far back that the world and lifeforms in it felt completely unrecognisable. Perhaps I’m just too vertebrate-centric, but once we moved into invertebrates in later chapters (and even more so when were at single-celled organisms) I found it a little harder to be engaged.
Overall though, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Otherlands for its strong writing style and its unqiue combination of ecology and geology, used to explore the diverse lifeforms that have lived on our planet.
Otherlands has been described as vivid, evocative, and cinematic, and I can see why thanks to Halliday’s incredible writing style. The prose really made me feel transported to the various places and eras of geological time covered, and immersed in the intricate webs of life in these worlds. That said, I did feel at some points that more illustrations would have been a useful addition; some of the prehistoric organisms, ecosystems, and landscapes are so unlike anything that exists today that it strained my imagination to try and picture them. However, I’ll concede that I’m not a very visual person, so this may be less of an issue for other readers.
I felt the strongest chapters in the book were the middle chapters - far enough back in time that it felt instantly different to our own time, but not so far back that the world and lifeforms in it felt completely unrecognisable. Perhaps I’m just too vertebrate-centric, but once we moved into invertebrates in later chapters (and even more so when were at single-celled organisms) I found it a little harder to be engaged.
Overall though, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Otherlands for its strong writing style and its unqiue combination of ecology and geology, used to explore the diverse lifeforms that have lived on our planet.