Book Review: The Many-Colored Land

Sometimes a book challenges your intelligence. This may be through twists in the plot or factual information you knew nothing about. Sometimes it's simply the vocabulary used within the book.

The Many-Colored (or Coloured, depending on where you live) Land challenged my vocabulary and understanding of sentence structure from the start. However, after reading a little over 10% of the book, it either settled down in its approach or I adapted to the writing style.

You see, that first 10% will make or break you. If you are unable to get past it, you will probably not enjoy the book and even choose to close its pages or delete it from your device.

Fortunately, I enjoyed the book. My initial draw to it was it being a group read and also that it contained time travel, which always entices me no matter how bad a book or movie turns out to be.

This book is an adventurous romp through the Pliocene era of earth, nearly 26 million years ago (give or a take a year). The wham and bam of the opening chapters says a lot, including focusing for brief moments on each of the characters who will be a part of the story. And there are a lot of characters.

The world building really starts after part one as we discover what earth was like 26 million years past. A really fun story takes place. It definitely turned my expectations upside down as it progressed into the fantasy realm with the things that occur.

All of it made for an interesting tale that is book one of this saga.

The only few issues I had with the book were the way sentences were structured and words were used that left me having to decipher some things to understand them better. My Kindle "definition finger" was on fire and at some point Alexa told me to go back to school.

The ending left me feeling like it was a little anti-climatic. It builds up to this moment that in some ways is foreshadowed in the first chapter. But I felt it was as if the events that take place were being relayed as a past event rather than unfolding in the moment and actually lacked the excitement I expected it to have at its conclusion. This actually happens several times of the book. And maybe that's a good thing because if those times were told as happening in the moment, I'm sure the book would have been close to 15-25% longer.

All in all, I enjoyed the novel and plan to read the next in the series some time in the future.

And with that, I say, I recommend this book.