Customer Reviews

Auralia's Colors (The Auralia Thread Series #1)

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I became a fan of Jeffrey Overstreet after reading his book on film, Through a Screen Darkly, and subsequently become a reader of his blog, Looking Closer. Auralia's Colors is the first in a proposed series of four, to which I say, "Bring it."

It's an astonishingly accomplished debut, and falls prey to none of the lazy traps to which fantasy writers are prone. The characters are strong, the concept and plot inventive and original, and the prose is lyrical. Here's a sample:

"The child's words, an empty chant, made Auralia recoil. A sudden fear swept over her, and she climbed off the stool, dragging the cape toward the questioner as if to save her from a chill. 'Nobody owns the colors. Can't you see? They're free. They're what trees do. They're what water and sky do. Fields. Hills. Mountains. No matter how much you give them away, there'll always be more.'"

Auralia is a fresh creation, a character that I can't compare to any I've seen in the fantasy literature I've read. She's not the stereotypical fierce hoyden or pampered princess, nor is she the wise and mystical Galadriel-type. She's a child of nature stepping into destiny with a confidently unsure step, if that makes sense. She doesn't know who she is or where she came from, but she can't deny the purpose and passions that animate her any more than the trees can deny giving their colors.

Overstreet credits Patricia McKillip's The Book of the Atrix Wolfe as an influence in his foreword, and I would say that's the author I'd most closely link him to, of the ones I've read-I've not read Guy Gavriel Kay yet, whom Overstreet also mentions. I put it in my Young Adult category not because I think it's written for a teen audience, but because teens who love to read and enjoy books about magic are likely to enjoy this book. Especially the girls.

The highest praise I can give this book is to tell you that it took me forever to read, by Superfast standards, anyway, because I was so enthralled by the story and the world he was creating that I wanted to stay in each sentence a little longer than usual.

[...].

At a live podcast Jeffrey Overstreet described how he came on the idea on a hike with his wife, overlooking a lake. He had an image of a woman with a coat of splendid colors, and she had come to bring it to a city where no color is allowed. He had to know her story, and so was forced to write this book.

Overstreet's wife is a poet who helped him hone every word, and it shows. Every word drips honey. This is a work of art. The fantasy is so full you have to put the book down every few minutes, to contemplate the tapestry you've been drawn into. I am transported into another land, into myth on the level of George MacDonald.

Overstreet has an ability to paint a convincing image for the people who have no color, and then bring to life unknown colors through sheer description. He has a phenomenal commitment to true fantasy, and not the humdrum of today that exists merely as a dry husk of a once great genre. Overstreet's very names evoke new thought and let your mind ride the winds of imagination.

The book ends well, answering all questions, and yet leaving much unanswered as future hope. I want more, and am thankful there are three more books coming. Yet I felt satisfied at the end of this book, as after a good meal. But it was not merely my literary palate that was satisfied. For there are depths upon depths in Overstreet, and the spirit is stretched as well, through labyrinthian pathways of unexpected discovery.

Don't wait. Don't walk. Run, and get this book, and know what true pleasure is.

Some book reviews are harder than others. This is such a one: Auralia's Colors, first in the Auralia's Thread series by Jeffrey Overstreet (WaterBrook). Mind you, the book has many merits and has received numbers of complimentary reviews. So my difficulty in reviewing Auralia's Colors is not because I think it lacks merit. The truth is, I admire the book ... but I don't love it. I wanted to. I wish I did. But perhaps others of you will.

The Place. The story is set in a location known as The Expanse. The area was divided into four houses, each with it's own set of governing customs and rules. One of the houses, Cent Regus, was poisoned when its people meddled with magic. Now they have devolved into beastmen who attack and raid citizens of the other houses. In the particular House our story is concerned with, those caught committing a crime, if not imprisoned or executed, are condemned to become gatherers living in camps outside the protective walls--and therefore vulnerable to attack. Because of a ruling made by the Queen of the House, it is now against the law for average citizens to own anything colorful.

The Story. Two thieves going about their duties as gatherers discover an abandoned baby girl. They take her into their camp where she grows up. Eventually she tells them her name is Auralia, though she doesn't know how she knows this or where she came from.

Soon she displays remarkable independence, going off into the forest on her own where she finds colors. From the things she finds in nature, she weaves colorful hats, scarves, and the like.

When these items are discovered by the king's men, trouble is afoot.

That's the bare bones of the central action, though there is much more going on, especially revolving around the young Prince Cal-raven, Queen Jaralaine, the beastmen, an ale boy, Captain Ark-robin, the stonecrafter Sharr ben Fray, and the shadowy Keeper, present in all children's dreams but outgrown by most adults.

Strengths. There's much to love in this book. There is some beautiful writing, for example.

The "faith elements" are embedded in the story through types and suggestion. I have to admit, this is my favored way for a writer to display his Christian worldview, because it allows the reader to mine the story for meaning. I find it to be much more enjoyable than having the meaning handed to me.

The plot is not predictable. Yes, there are some events that one can foresee, but rarely do they play out as you might expect.

So why didn't I love it?

Weakness. Pure and simply, I did not love any of the characters. I was interested in some, and that kept me reading, but in the end, I didn't feel invested in what happened to various ones. Perhaps this was because of the omniscient point of view. I have begun to suspect that the omniscient narrator voice keeps readers at arm's distance, and I'm used to being wrapped inside a character.

There may be something else, however. I honestly couldn't say who the protagonist of the story is. You'd think that, of course, the title character is the protagonist, and I suppose that is true, but I would guess that Auralia is only in about half the book. Yes, she is central to the action, but also, not. It's ... hard to explain.

Recommendation. I absolutely recommend this book. It is not the fast action kind of story that a superhero fantasy offers. In fact, I would even say it leans more toward literary fiction.

It's an important book, I think. It broadens the Christian fantasy genre, since it is neither allegorical nor overt in it's depiction of Christianity. For those who love language, love fantasy, or want to see more Christian fantasy of various types, I highly recommend Auralia's Colors.

Don't get me wrong. It isn't Gene Wolfe, or Tim Powers. Let's not claim too much. But within its bounds of ambition, this is very fine work.

The writing is quite good. Whoever writes "He and his armored vawn were motionless, silent, hidden in brambles, waiting" can put a sentence together. If this book falls into the Patricia McKillip trap of letting artsy prose about magic become a little vague, if I still have very little idea what a vawn looks like, I don't mind too much. Well, I could use a BIT more explanation of why the last catastrophe had to be, what all that magic was about and what it did. Overstreet's trick of kennings grew on me. A certain kind of bush is a jewelweed, a certain kind of bird is a streamertail. That pretty neatly avoids making up some nonsense name which you'd then have to explain-- "sigafoose tree" or something--but also the other pitfall of calling everything oaks and rabbits and having your reader wonder why you write fantasy if you haven't got botanical or zoological imagination. These words give us a picture of that for which we wouldn't have a name. Smart solution to the problem of description in high fantasy. Overdone in the first few pages? Maybe, but hey. Read on.

Its Christianity is not explicit, not yet in the series anyway, but it's grounded deeply on belief in the supernatural. Overstreet neatly avoids one-to-one allegory in favor of symbols that open up meaning, not close it down. Its Christ-figures (I count two so far) are . . . problematic, like and unlike Christ. They make me want to think hard about the similarities and differences, measure the distance between Christ and them, write a paper (well, maybe not that last part). These colours, I thought, these colours that the king took from the people--what a dully politically correct idea--the big bad authority figures had taken away colour, and all the people need is freedom to express themselves, freedom to recognize and ornament themselves with the colour around them, freedom to really live (cue crescendo of music here). But the theme of colour did not go the way I thought it would. And the path it went certainly wasn't politically correct.

Overstreet seemed to have control over his language and over his story. That let me relax. The story and setting are confined to a small cast of characters, and, really, a rather cloistered area in the woods. Not sprawlingly Jordanesque or Martinesque, easy to keep track of. He designed the plot rather well, almost all his various threads and perspectives meeting at story's climax and interacting on the basis of the stories he had made for each of them. If anything this book suffers from first-book-in-a-series-itis. As neatly as the climax was set up, I don't yet understand it. Surely more exposition, event is coming later. The ending is not satisfactory on any level (except for that lovely dramatic epilogue, like a trip to Jabba the Hutt).

My reading experience, as you perhaps can tell, was marked by a lot of initial fear. These were going to be trite characters, stale theology, an uninteresting postmodern plea for inclusivity, a hack of a writer. Overstreet gradually impressed me, because he surprised me. We readers need surprise, a way to be shocked into awe at the truths we already know--or thought we knew, or had dismissed too soon. That's what Christian fantasy is all about.

The book is decent, but I had problems with the first 77 pages of the book. The story jumps all over in time with numerous flashbacks. So does the point-of-view, which constantly slide from one person to the next in a very distracting way. The author also rarely went very deeply into any one person's head.

In these first few chapters, there is very little dialogue and what little action occurs is often repetitious: we're told in a distant viewpoint what happens, then we jump back and replay the scene with dialogue and various point-of-view characters. I couldn't bond with any character because there were so many of them being introduced (with few of them reappearing during the first 50 pages), and Auralia wasn't even one of the point-of-view characters.

However, after page 77, the time- and head-jumping halts, Auralia becomes the main point-of-view character, and the reader is allowed more fully into the point-of-view characters' heads. The pacing became more balanced at this point, and book was pretty enjoyable.

Another problem I had, though, was that Auralia was at least 15 years old and was probably 16. However, she's repeatedly described like a young child (e.g. she has tiny arms and hands). People keep saying, "But she's just a child!" and reacting to her like she was about 8 years old. In fact, she often acts like a 8 to 12-year-old (depending on the scene).

The world-building in the book was good, but the author frequently invented names for things with little to no concrete description attached. I often had difficultly visualizing what a new thing or creature was like. The characters were interesting and varied, but only one character really changed much during the book.

As for positives, there was no sex or cussing. Overall, I'd recommend this as a good, clean fun novel.

Genre Review
http://genrereviews.blogspot.com/

From the first chapter, Auralia's Colors reached out and grabbed my imagination. As I read it I felt, smelled, heard and saw Auralia's world. Overstreet writes with poetry, weaving senses in and out, twisting and wrapping details around the art of classic storytelling. I don't know that I've read a book with more beautiful and unique descriptions.

Omniscient point of view is my least favorite. I feel that it robs intimacy or cheapens it. Auralia's Colors falls into this a bit. I know that it would be impossible to enter as many characters' heads as Overstreet has created, but I missed the intimacy of seeing the world through limited characters eyes. Those of you who love classic storytelling shouldn't have an issue with this, but those who don't delight in this art, probably will. Overstreet does a good job of adding bits of personality and uniqueness to his large cast of characters, but I still missed an emotional connection.

Overstreet has done a remarkable job of creating House Abascar and keeping all the details straight. However, sometimes I scanned those details. The spiritual elements were allegorical and not heavy or overdone.

Overall, this is not a sit down and read in one session thriller. Imagine that Auralia's Colors is a clear, early-April stream swollen with winter snow-melt and tiny passengers. As the water moves toward its destination it dances and skips over glossy stones, swirls with an occasional leaf or twig and is redirected by the hoof of a deer as it bends to slake its thirst. A tight, thriller fantasy would be a white water river crashing over boulders, logs and an occasional unlucky passenger tossed from a raft. If you are a white water kind of person I don't know that Auralia is for you. But lovers of poetry and storytelling need to look further into Auralia's Colors.

I won't even try to explain this book's plot. It's way to complex for me to be able to do it justice. All you really need to know is the blurb from the back cover: "As a baby, she was rescued by thieves. As a girl, she has a dangerous gift. Called before the king, she might bring down the kingdom."

Jeffrey Overstreet is one seriously talented writer. For the most part, I don't like epic fantasy (Christopher Hopper being the most notable exception). The slow pacing and wordy descriptions don't appeal to me at all. But Overstreet, with his masterful writer skill, includes in Auralia's Colors a few of the thing most other writers forget to add to their epics: an epic plot. Characters you care about. And an utterly satisfying ending.

This is the most fun I have had reading since I first read Tolkien as a young person. As an artist, I was thrilled to read about the power of beauty to transform lives. My youngest boys, 10 and 12, were drawn to the cover and snatched it away every time I set it down the day it arrived. Finally I locked myself in my room and finished the book at 1:38 a.m. The boys were waiting for me bright and early the next morning to start reading it for themselves. There were a few scuffles over who got it first but everybody lived to read another day. I had already received the second book and it also resulted very late night. Waiting for book three to come out in print was painful.

This is the first time my boys and I have read the same books at the same time and it has led to some marvelous conversations. I found out yesterday that Jeffery is a friend of a friend of mine and Lance assures me he is a great guy on top of a great writer. I was thinking that the 10 year old might be enjoying the story on a different level than I was and while that might be true, he was grasping some very complicated ideas.

I highly recommend this series to anyone and any family, but be prepared for some late reading nights.

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I loved this book. The main character is a both unique and very real young girl, and I got caught up in her journey as well as the other characters she comes into contact with. The prose is so rich that I had to read it slowly to savor it. But it is not so wordy that it is difficult to read. Rather the vivid details are a delight. I liked how the use of color is used to portray the transforming power of art and beauty. Even though I am a bit of a neophyte when it comes to fantasy fiction, I found this book an enjoyable and rewarding experience, and it makes me want to read more in this genre.

I have certain expectations that follow up the purchase of every new book I come home with. For starters, if the book can't capture me with an off-the-bat attraction to the author's "voice", I expect some kind of compensation in the depth and creativity of the story. Likewise, not all books have phenomenal stories that you could have never envisioned in your own imagination, and you would hope that the writer's voice would draw you into the story anyway...



Writing Style

Auralia's colors was more or less so/so in terms of voice and interest.
From the start of the book, I was kind of put off by the use of "imaginary" words like "inkblack" "cloudgrasper" and "cavecat". And what put me off even more were the characters names. Names like "King Cal-Marcus Ker Har-Baron", "Prince Cal-Raven", and "Ark-Robin". I had to force my-self to over-look the constant dash-cluttered dialog.
Okay, there weren't dashes in the actual verbal interaction, but it's hard to look past the scrambled names that appear throughout the book.



The general reading experience

As for the general level of interest that I felt towards my reading experience with this book...There were a few times here and there that I put the book down out of boredom. I never felt a personal connection with any of the characters. (The book kind of jumps around from one character's perspective to another throughout each chapter).
The beginning of the book is relatively tedious. Like I said, I had no sympathy towards any of the characters. Well...not until the end of the book, when the action KIND OF starts to pick up.



The conclusion

I was happy to finish reading Auralia's colors. After I read the last chapter and the Epilogue, I threw the book back onto the bookshelf and immediately picked up another. I wasn't too drawn into the ending, so I was anxious to move on. =\

I'll probably give the sequel a go...hopefully it has more action and character development than this one.