The Many-Colored Land

About time - I hope we get the rest of Julian May

This is the first time I have heard this narrator and I like her! She does a good job bringing the dialogue to life. This first book of the series is necessarily a slow starter as it establishes that back-story for the caste of characters that will embody the ensuing story for several books that follow. Despite this, I found it interesting, largely thanks to the narrator.

This has been one of my favorite Sci-Fi series since I was a teenager. I have been wondering when it would be converted to audio and I hope Audible converts the rest of The Saga of The Pliocene Exile series, along with the prequels: The Surveillance, Intervention, and The Galactic Milieu series. Very cool look into man's possible evolution.

28 of 28 people found this review helpful

The start of a well-realized universe

I first read all of Julian May's Pliocene Exile series and related Galactic Milieu series decades ago. Periodically I've checked to see if any were turned into audiobooks and finally, the first has been! It's always dicey to listen to a well-loved book -- will the narrator do it justice? Will you hear something new in the narrator's interpretation? I must say, I'm delighted with Bernadette's reading/interpretation of the story. Yes, there are a lot of characters and it may be a tad challenging to follow the first time. Stick with it - the story just gets richer and richer, and the characters evolve in unexpected ways. The worst thing will be waiting for the rest of the series....Blackstone Audio, don't keep us waiting too long!

17 of 17 people found this review helpful

Good book ... but where's the rest of the series?

If you could sum up The Many-Colored Land in three words, what would they be?

Good book ... but where's the rest of the series? It's a bit of a bummer to not have the rest of the series as audiobooks. This is not a new series, so what's the holdup?

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

Let's start over, shall we?

The Sage of Pliocene Exile is one of my all-time favorite series. It's been so long since the first book, MANY-COLORED LAND, came out in audio that it looks like no continuation is planned. In that case, let's start again from the beginning, with a different reader. Find a good reader and do all the books.

I was amazed to find this reader has done so many Audible books. In this book she is hoarse, her reading has almost no dynamics, and I find it irritating that she invariably reads "metapsychic" as "metaphysic". Her phrasing and emphases often seem to indicate that she isn't paying attention to the author's meaning. Surely a professional should pay attention to what he/she is reading??

This is my opinion after 5 hours of listening. Maybe later she learns what words Julian May is using, but even then, not correcting early mistakes would speak badly for the producers.

15 of 16 people found this review helpful

Loved the books

This series has long been a favorite of mine. I didn't feel that the audio book format added anything to it, but neither did it take away. I thought the narrator did good job. I found the voice easy to listen to, the characterizations were adequate.
I hope very much that they will bring the rest of the books to audible and would certainly get them if done by the same narrator.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Loved the book, didnt like the narrator

I have read the book more then a few times and i love it.
Bernadette Dunne who is narrating this book is reading it like its being read by a machine.
I tried to listen to her read another book, and its the same, its just her voice.

I recently heard Harry Potter read by Stephen Fry, and though i dont expect the narrator to create different voices for each person, the way he imbeds himself in the story is tottaly missing from Bernadettes read of the many-colored land.
There is nothing wrong with her english or pronaunciation, its just not good enough for lack of better wording.
I hope that you find anther narrator if anymore of Julian Mays books are converted to audiobooks.

Kind regards
Carsten

11 of 12 people found this review helpful

Setup-heavy but enjoyable sci-fi/fantasy hybrid

I wouldn't call this 1981 novel the deepest book out there, but it's fun pleasure reading that mixes science fiction and fantasy in a creative way, and doesn’t feel too dated. The pitch is that people who are misfits in the safe, civilized world of the 22nd century have the option of going through a one-way time portal to six million years in the Earth's past (the scientist who invented the portal never discovered how to make it go to another time or place). In classic form, Julian May introduces a cast of ten or so main characters who come from different walks of life, but all have reasons for choosing "exile". There's a retired paleontologist, a nun/doctor seeking spiritual peace, a self-centered starship captain, an incorrigible sociopath, a teenage athlete with an unusual talent, a roughneck driller with fantasies of being a Viking warrior... and several more. After a few introductory chapters in which we get to know these individuals separately (a fine example of interesting but economical setup), they arrive at the portal in time to make the jump to together.

As it turns out, though, the Earth of the past is already occupied by out-of-towners, in this case two related groups of aliens that bear a strong resemblance to mythical beings from humanity's prehistory. Upon arrival, the travelers find themselves sorted into different categories, depending on their skills and latent "metaphysic" abilities (telepathy, telekinesis, hypnosis, etc.). The aliens have a society that everyone is free to join, provided, of course, that humans cooperate with the aliens' goals. For those less than perfectly willing, there are mind-control collars called “torcs” -- or being hunted by prehistoric animals if one tries to escape. Naturally, many of our protagonists select "none of the above".

I wouldn’t say that the characters are particularly original or deeply written, but May is imaginative, and her background as a science and biography writer is in evidence. The middle portion of the novel is a little slow and somewhat confusing, as she sets up the world of Pleistocene, giving us a lot of characters and cultural details to keep track of, but things pick up in the last third, which builds to an action-packed finale. This is one of those series where, if you’re going to bother at all, you might as well assume that you’re going to read the second book. It’s odd that Blackstone hasn’t done audio productions of any further entries so far.

Speaking of, I didn’t mind the voice of audiobook narrator Bernadette Dunne, but I found her reading a little sloppy. Characters start off with accents and lose them, or have ones that aren’t quite right for their background. At one point, she mispronounces the word “Polish” (as in nationality) as “polish” (as in floor). How did that get by?

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Great story

Love this series. It's too bad there are no other audio books from this author.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

More please...

What made the experience of listening to The Many-Colored Land the most enjoyable?

My husband's reading ability is not great and I knew he'd struggle with the French words, Tanu words, future slang, techno jargon of this series and yet I knew he'd love the daring do and imagination of it too, so it was absolutely wonderful to be able to get an Audible copy of book 1. We really, really, really want you to do the other books in the series though...

Who was your favorite character and why?

It's a funny series like that: everyone is a favourite character. I guess Julian May is just good at writing even the most unlikely of people in a sympathetic manner...

What does Bernadette Dunne bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I really loved the readers metallic-tinged voice and the way that added another layer to the fantasy timbre of the book. I was also in awe of her ability to cope with the difficult language and convey the multitude of characters and also mindspeech...

Any additional comments?

Pleeaase can we have more?

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

A Time Travel Scifi Fantasy Epic, So-So Narrator

I read this novel many, many years ago, and have anticipated its audiobook arrival for a long time.

Imagine a future where only one single possible means of time travel has been discovered, and to only the prehistoric era of this planet. Imagine traveling millions of years back in time, only to discover a growing alien medieval culture, deposited lovingly there by a dying mother-ship. Imagine crystal armored knights fighting and jousting, with psi powers driven by the torcs around their necks, and those same torcs holding both a slave cast and ruling hierarchy firmly in place. Imagine dinosaurs, aliens, humans, and a story of daring rebellion, political intrigue, and machiavellian plot twists.

Epic, to say the very least.

Now, get a lesser narrator to put a voice to the words.

From epic to epic fail.

I regret to say that this narrator was inappropriate for this work. Not bad, but definitely not into the work, as so many other men and women who are FAR more capable to the task would have turned the author's work into audio gold.

Now, I still recommend this listen, but I do so with regret, that a better narrator could have better introduced you to a fantastic series of books that have easily stood the test of time.

You will enjoy this audiobook. Julian May is, in a word, ASTOUNDING. Don't let the narrator put you off on this one.

7 of 8 people found this review helpful