Aurelia was found as a toddler by a river. She is raised by the Gatherers, people who have been thrown out of the walls of the city for various crimes. Many years ago the Queen forbade colors; all color belongs only to the upper class. Unfortunately for Aurelia she excels in finding color in everything and the palace wants her for the their own. Will Aurelia succeed in giving the commonfolk back their colors?

As I said the writing is beautifully done. The story unfortunately did not grab me. The writer constantly switches viewpoint between tons of different characters and I found that very distracting. It was hard to get involved or really care about any of the characters. The writing style, despite its beauty, did little to bring the scenes in the book alive for me. I also found the story in general to be a very dull read, it moved forward at a very deliberate pace. I had a lot of trouble getting through this book.

The imagine my shock (not knowing Overstreet is a Christian writer) when the whole story drops any pretense of creativity and becomes just another retelling of the story of Christ. The parallels between the story of Christ and Aurelia were painfully transparent and the ending of the book had my eyeballs rolling as the characters and story were pushed aside to pull everything together into a perfect retelling of the classic religious story.

In summary, the story starts out beautifully written but the writing and characters are dry, the plot creeps along and is a bit schizophrenic because of the multitude of viewpoints it is told from. I had a lot of trouble getting through this book. Then when the whole pretense of a creative story was dropped to re-deliver a story of Christ that has been delivered a million times before it just added to my ire. I won't be reading anymore of Overstreet's books; they are just too boring and preachy for me.

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What an interesting story Jeff has woven together through the novel of "Auralia's Colors". This is a story to set sometime aside to read and let it soak in. I will bet that this is one that would even fascinate my husband to read.

Sections in this book lost my interest, and I wanted to walk away, but I am glad that I did not because all in all it was quite an enjoyable journey and I plan to read the rest of the Threads as they present themselves.

I found the atmosphere for me was very reminiscent of Stephen Lawhead", especially his lately series including "Hood", "Scarlet", and in 2009 "Tuck".

As a Fantasy novel, this is one of those that you fall into and forget about what is real and what is not. That is one of the hardest parts for me, but once I click into the world, I do not want to leave. I'm so glad that I have "Cyndere's Midnight" that I can jump into right away.

If you enjoy Lawhead, or Toilken, or Madeleine L'Engle, I do believe that you will find enjoyment through the creative prose that is practically poetry in the writings of Jeffrey Overstreet.

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For my full review visit www.paperbackgoddess.blogspot.com

Auralia's Colors is an inventive story, unlike anything I had ever read before. It creates a vivid picture of a great land, called the Expanse, and of the different types of people who inhabit this land. The descriptions are very detailed, to the point where a creative mind could envision themselves walking along the banks of the River Throanscall or wandering amongst the Gatherers' huts.

The number of named characters was so massive that it is possible to become confused, or forget some altogether, so that when they are later mentioned, you have to stop and think to remember what you already learned about them. When you combine this with the extravagant descriptions, the story does have its moments where it seems long-winded and it causes you to lose interest.

I find myself with mixed emotions for Auralia's Colors. It was a good story, but I sometimes wondered if it fell into the category of "too much of a good thing."

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Overstreets prose was compelling enough to carry me through the first half of Auralias Colors, but after that I realized just how bored with the story I had become. Although Overstreet proves his skill at crafting captivating language, he is not so adept at crafting characters of flesh, blood and emotional depth. With the exception of the Ale Boys character, I felt little connection to any of the other characters, and as a result lost interest with the story.

So many of the characters seemed to be either stock clichés (Stricia) or one-dimensional mannequins who moved the story forward without displaying any inner life or emotional resonance. Fortunately, Overstreet was able to draw Auralia with more fullness, yet not enough to bring her off the page as a fully conceived person. The Ale Boy was the only character that held my interest and the only one to live and breath on the page. Not surprisingly, its the Ale Boys story that Overstreet continues to follow in subsequent books.

As for the religious overtones of the book, I must say that while there was a spiritual element involved, it was by no means explicitly Christianor at least not conservative, fundamentalist Christian (which is what I was expecting). Perhaps it was more an explanation of Truth.

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I really liked this book -- wasn't sure I would but once I started, I couldn't stop reading. Overstreet's writing is beautiful, very lyrical and full of imagery. It is not a quick read that you can blow through in a weekend, but worth the time. There was some Christian imagery in it, but I did not find it to be overdone and still thought the book was an engaging story.
If I had to find a fault with this story, I would agree with a previous reviewer who said the made up language was overdone (just a touch), but the characters are so engaging and the story interesting enough, that I really didn't give it much thought until I read these reviews. So highly recommended and definitely worth your time if you'd love to read a beautifully written fantasy.

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