The Many-Coloured Land (Saga of the Exiles Book 1)

The Saga of the Exiles on e-reader! Excellent!First read Julian May's brilliant Saga years and years ago and still have the paperbacks. Went on from the Pliocene exiles to Jack the Bodiless and Diamond Mask and all the rest of the Milieu stories. Fabulous stories of telepathically and psychokinetically operant humans and how they got there. Yes, it's nonsense by any normal, everyday standards but the story is a huge sweep of imagination with cleverness and wit woven right the way through it - Aiken Drum, the trickster and arch-manipulator being the spitting image of Machiavelli, for instance.If you're an SF buff I highly recommend this series. Funnily enough, I was looking idly for it as e-books just a few months ago and there was nothing available from "official" channels - an unofficial copy I found and downloaded had no formatting. You'd be amazed how flat and boring a story becomes with no paragraphs! Then they appeared as "trade copies" - not quite sure what that means, but perhaps it's associated with one gripe I do have about the e-versions - that scanner misreads haven't been sub-edited out. For example, one of the Firvulag Great Heroes is called Sharn-Mes; usually abbreviated to Sharn. In the e-version it appears about 70% of the time as "Sham" which grates badly every time. There are other examples.Nonetheless, I'm ploughing my way through the whole lot all over again and loving it. Give yourself a treat. Get at least the four "Saga" books and read them!

I first started reading these in my student days (many years ago now !) and became completely enthralled with the story and the characters. Later, when the second series prequel/sequel came out I was equally mesmerised.The characters are so colourful and complex, and it is a rollercoaster ride through both the history and future of our planet with mystery, politics, family, aliens, love, sex, good and evil all woven together in a fantastic story.It may very well be heresy, but I think they are much better than Lord of the Rings. If I start reading the first book, I don't get anything else done for weeks because I have to finish all eight ! I have read the whole series many times over the years. I can't understand why they have never attracted greater attention and why they are out of print.I hope they become available on the kindle soon, or I will be reduced to buying myself second hand backup copies to ensure that I am never without this brilliant series. If my son wants to read them (when he's a little older than 13), he might have to have his own set !! I will be guarding mine jealously ....

First read the books many years ago and enjoyed the story immensely. It is a very well thought out and thought- provoking series of books. The Kindle editions however are peppered with spelling errors (I know that some of them are US versions of words) but there a lot of other basic errors that seem to have escaped the proofreaders. Book 2 seems especially bad. I think if you were reading the books for the first time via Kindle it might be confusing although still enjoyable. I think it would also be good if Amazon Kindle published this type of book in a 3 volume set rather than individual novels.Grumbles aside Julian May creates a world like no other. It is a novel sci-fi theme that reverts to the past prehistory of the Earth from the future...roll on the Intervention!!

There are those who will never read anything that has a spaceship in the story. Then there are those who will never read anything that involves fantasy, magic, swords or dragons. For the rest of us, although there are no dragons, this is a unique blend of great, sustained storytelling approximately but not entirely in the SF/Fantasy genre, combined with a leap of the imagination which I have not seen equalled for its effect long after one has finished the books. She combines plausible future history and technology with an inspired link to our distant evolutionary past via time travel, and even weaves in the myths of our early societies. The childish desires of us all are also indulged with wonderfully imagined treats such as the ability to fly unaided or blow up a whole mountain with the power of thought alone.Quite brilliant and with very wide appeal - if you can deal with one spaceship (at the beginning) and plenty of swords (in the middle). If not, well there's always that biography of Clinton to get to....

This is the first book in the 'Saga of the Exiles', where social misfits/criminals, unable to adapt to humanity's new standing in a Galactic Civilisation, are able to take a one way trip into Earth's distant past with the chance to start a new simpler life. Most are hoping for a Garden of Eden where they can live out their lives as fisherman/small holders/viticulturists and escape the stresses of living in their future.Obviously this doesn't come to pass. Earth's past is dominated by a malign exotic alien species and the integration of the individual time-travellers into this society is problematic...