****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This is the first book in a series which covers about 150 years or so from around the middle of the 1800's to, well, about now. It begins prior to the Civil War, and tells the tale of an extra-terrestrial alien who has been abandoned on Earth as punishment for his accident of birth on his home planet. He is someone who is not supposed to exist, and yet he does, so he is banished. His lifetime is several hundred years, so there is a lot of life for him to live yet.As we watch him create a life, get married and have a child, and establish his fortune, the story continues on its trajectory with new characters from other planets making their entrances. By the end of the 6th book, the reader has lived through an epic adventure both here at home, in space, and on other planets.It's one of the most unusual sci-fi stories I've read. Ms. Collier has developed real characters, living in a place that she clearly knows very well. I always had the sense of dislocation you get when you are tossed and thrown between stories and cultures, never really finding your feet. The lead character, Llewellyn (they all sound like Welsh or Scots names to me), never loses sight of his end game, though he also never abandons anyone he loves on Earth. He waits to go back to his home world until his wife has passed on, and he allows his children to make their own decisions regarding where they want to spend their lives.At that point, the story becomes one of space battles and lives on distant planets.Ms. Collier has done an impressive job of creating folks who are alien, but who you care for, nonetheless. Her people are not simply American teenagers playing a game. They have alien ways of behaving, alien philosophies, alien religions, and so forth. They are not Earthlings. Even the half-breeds are distinctly different.I love these books and recommend them completely.
