The Many-Coloured Land – Julian May

Sci-fi novels are a bone of contention in my household, Mr Saunders loves them, I do not. Now and then he will go on and on about a book I should read, he tells me, “it is different from other sci-fi you have read”,“you’ll love the story line”, “it isn't really 'strictly speaking' sci-fi”. Every time he gets that excited about another one of his favourite authors or series I just know I will end up with it on my kindle and this is exactly how I came to read The Many-Coloured Land by Julian May.

The novel is done in three parts, part one was full of character set up, giving a new character to every chapter. It was all very wham bam thank you ma'am, a lot of information to take in and frankly by the time I got to part two I had forgotten a lot of who was who and needed to work it all out again anyway. I found the chapters centred on a single character disorientating and at times a little too brief giving virtually no real character building. I’m not the kind of person who skips parts of a book, but if I was I probably would have skipped huge sections of part one.

For me the story got better in part two, finally the antagonist is introduced to the unlikely heroes, who I kind of, maybe remember a bit about. The problem for me with The Many-Coloured Land was not the plot, the story-line quite enjoyable once I got into part two and I especially enjoyed the clever supposition of Celtic mythology into a story about the Pilocene era. For me the problem was too much scientific description for my taste, which is quite a common issue I have with many sci-fi books.

I love watching sci-fi and I really wished I liked reading it but I just can't stomach all the long winded descriptions about how various gadgets work. Every now and then I struggle through all of the technological lingo to read a sci-fi book, but it is a battle I fight hard to win. I broke reading The Many-Coloured Land up with other books in between. Finish part one reward myself with another book before continuing on, another reward for finishing part two and then I was on the home ward stretch.

Honestly this is not an awful story, being published in 1981 it has stood the test of time as an outstanding example of well received science fiction. Personally I'm just not a fan of heavy scientific descriptions or historical geology and The Many-Coloured Land is full of lengthy paragraphs dedicated to describing the Pliocene epoch in meticulous detail.

As much as I found the plot enjoyable I am not sure I will be continuing on to any of the other books in the series. Julian May is a much loved author and The Saga of The Exiles has been highly praised by many people through out the thirty plus years since it was published, I am only going to give it 3 tea bags however as it is definitely not my cup of tea.