Though she escapes her life of sexualized violence, she’s never able to escape her demons. She’s small, almost child-like, and despite a world constantly beating her down, surprisingly strong. Born into the caste, her life has been nothing but hardship and violence. Her grasp on humanity-and even reality-slips over the course of the series.

Yet she’s a sympathetic character deeply in need of validation that she will never receive on account of her inability to open up to anyone. Haunted by (psychological) demons, she’s constantly both on edge and in danger of losing her thread of humanity. She’s small, almost child-like, yet surprisingly strong.

In The Many-Colored Land, Felice is an outcast, even among the rest of the outcasts. Disconnected from everything she loves, Elizabeth exiles herself to the Pliocene era, with her only goal to literally drift around the world in a balloon. Cut off from the world she knew and the one person she clearly loved, she drifts disconnected and goalless into the walls of F’Row.Įlizabeth from The Many-Colored Land loses her husband-and her telekinesis-in an accident. In An Alien Light, Ayrys is exiled from her home, losing her child in the process. In both books, species’ loyalty is tested, pretty much to the breaking point, and strange alliances-and even friendships-are made.īoth books also start off with about six POV characters, and some of the characters even smack of each other. In both books, humans are subject to the rule of aliens with unfathomable knowledge and powers who will grant some of these powers to humans-for a price. In both books, these misfits have no way of knowing what to expect, and yet what they find is unexpected and upsets the natural order of their lives. The premise is somewhat similar: human misfits (for one reason or another) leave the world as they know it for the chance of something extraordinary and unknown. I just finished reading An Alien Light and in so many ways, it reminded me of Julian May’s epic series The Saga of Pliocene Exile. **Contains massive spoilers for both An Alien Light and The Saga of Pliocene Exile series **

The many colored land