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Auralia's Colors (The Auralia Thread Series #1) | 
 enlarge | Author: Jeffrey Overstreet
Publisher: WaterBrook Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.99
Buy New: $1.90
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Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 267778
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 1400072522
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781400072521
ASIN: 1400072522
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
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Product Description
When thieves find an abandoned child lying in a monster’s footprint, they have no idea that their wilderness discovery will change the course of history.
Cloaked in mystery, Auralia grows up among criminals outside the walls of House Abascar, where vicious beastmen lurk inshadow. There, she discovers an unsettling–and forbidden–talent for crafting colors thatenchant all who behold them, including Abascar’s hard-hearted king, an exiled wizard, and a prince who keeps dangerous secrets.
Auralia’s gift opens doors from the palace to the dungeons, setting the stage for violent and miraculous change inthe great houses of the Expanse.
Auralia’s Colors weaves literary fantasy together with poetic prose, a suspenseful plot, adrenaline-rush action, and unpredictable characters sure to enthrall ambitious imaginations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Slow start, but an ending that left me wanting more September 29, 2008
I must admit, I'm biased. I'm a story junky, and the story here really drew me in. I was not used to the prose and style in the beginning, but I forced myself to get used to it because I really wanted to know what happened to the characters next! So if you are used to a smoother style of writing, and it bothers you to have to wade through the first sections of a book, this would be a 3 star.
 A Breath of Fresh Air July 16, 2008
An former English major, I only read books with tight writing, sophisticated ideas and plots that make me think and keep me interested. I like to be shaken emotionally and I like books that stick with me long after I put them down. Books such as Watership Down, the Dune books, Ender's Game, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Harry Potter. Like those books, I couldn't put Jeff's book down. I read through it in a few days and at the end of the story I was left with the grief of the loss of the characters and my grief at the story being over.
Like the books above, Auralia's Colors is not perfect. Some people may not like the words, or the names or this or that. But then they are missing the opportunity. The opportunity to slow down and take it in and listen to a different voice. One that is trying to speak to us everyday that we usually miss. In reading the book, I can see the colors, the vibrant reds, the yellows, the greens, the shine of the birds feather. I can feel the textures of the colors, the lily pad wrapped around her feet. More so, I can feel her grief and struggle as she tries to make sense of this all and how to live in a world that doesn't fully comprehend the beauty of what she is doing. The world wants to possess. She says no one owns the colors. They are in the mountains, the trees, the grass, the animals. How many of us want to possess something that we can't? But we can be with it for a moment. A bird song. The last light of the sun hitting white daisies, casting them in an pink-orange hue.
I don't know if this is a coincidence, but since reading Auralia's Colors several months ago, I am seeing things I haven't seen in years... if ever. I will be out a walk in the evening and I hear a song bird that I have never heard and just stop and listen to it. I will notice flowers and smells or a butterfly with metallic bronze on white wings sitting on my ceiling. The neighbor cat that nestles in the tall grass every morning in my backyard.
This book is haunting. Many things are left unexplained, but in a way that left me space to wonder and think. I found myself thinking, wow I can't wait for the next book to come out, after all what is going to happen to this character or that character? Or maybe this is going to be explained or why this happened will make more sense. I sense Jeff is on this adventure with us exploring and letting the characters guide him and share their story.
A compelling first fantasy novel with the promise of more to come July 15, 2008
In AURALIA'S COLORS, which marks the beginning of The Auralia Thread fantasy series, culture critic Jeffrey Overstreet makes a compelling first foray into fiction.
Overstreet opens his story in the imaginative world of The Expanse. A soon-absent and arrogant queen convinces the remnant of Abascar to give up all its bright colors. Soon, wearing colors are only for the privileged; others must turn in anything beautifully pigmented. The former wealth of colors from days gone by are stored in the vaults of the palace, presumably to be brought out when "spring" arrives --- which it never seems to do. And somewhere, "the Keeper" calls to those who listen. (If you think there are Christian metaphors here, you're on the right track.)
All of this is about to change. The rascally old Gatherer, Krawg, and his comical sidekick Warney discover a baby girl in a monster's footprint alongside the River Throanscall. When the common folks outside the palace walls take the mysterious Auralia in to raise her, they quickly find out she's different. She grows up semi-wild, at home in the natural world. When she becomes a teen, she has a chance to enter the House Abascar and to make her pledge at the "Rites," away from the perceived drab colorlessness and drudgery of the Gatherers' existence. But Auralia doesn't see the point.
Auralia questions the system and gently encourages subversion. Defying the law, she pulls colors from nature and gifts the Gatherers with her creations: slow-burning gold honeycomb candles, stonecutters with scarlet sheaths, a pillow of white and yellow and burgundy. But, as Auralia soon learns, House Abascar punishes orphans who do not follow the rules.
Overstreet's narrative is poetic, with vivid splashes of color, verve and ingenuity. "The child became twigs and burnt autumn leaves, thin and fisty fingers clutching acorns and seed as though they were stolen jewels. Her hair hung in tangles, silver and brown like the bark of apple trees." To read AURALIA'S COLORS is to indulge in a cornucopia of prose pleasures like these.
A whole fantasy world emerges as you turn the pages --- one with beastman creatures who roar (different but reminiscent of the "Orcs" of J.R.R. Tolkien), ride-able visorcats who purr and curl up on "a bed of intoxicating madweed" and rainhounds who bark. Even the dialogue is full of oddities related to this mystical place; a soldier might call another "you crusty old vawn nugget" or brag, "I earned that valor medal for killing two Cent Regus reptiles." Most of it the reader will be able to follow; occasionally it becomes confusing.
The characters are no less spellbinding: the beautiful princess and queen mad for power with twisted hearts; the impotent king who is addicted to a powerful potion; an ale boy who has a back story that tells us he's not all who he seems to be on the surface; and an advisor of wizardly dimensions who appears and disappears on the scene to mentor the prince Cal-raven, who we are unsure of whether will be a force for good or benign.
What the reader isn't prepared for is the violence that suddenly shocks with its intensity in the very last pages of the book. It's a startling contrast to the early part of the story, and the audience may well wonder if it is a precursor to more violence in the coming sequels. The violence might be upsetting to younger readers, although it is certainly no stronger than what you see on previews during a cable television commercial. It also vividly illustrates the evil found in Abascar. Still, this is the only caution I'd have about recommending the book to younger fantasy fans.
But the biggest warning to take away is this: If you read AURALIA'S COLORS, "The Red Strand" in The Auralia Thread series, you'll be hooked. I know I'll be eagerly awaiting the next installment.
--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby
Poetic Prose and Colorful Creativity June 18, 2008
One of the most poetic and powerful fantasy novels of recent years doesn't deal with magic spells, orcs, elves and mages, but a kingdom that bans the wearing of colors and the girl, Auralia, who defies this law. First time novelist Jeffery Overstreet creates a vivid and colorful world around the compelling narrative of a colorless kingdom. It's great cast of memorable characters and compelling narrative that intertwines the past with the present seamlessly makes for a page turner. But it's really the writing that will draw you in as Overstreet brings a poetic flair to his work and paints vivid images and the enrapturing world of The Expanse with words. Auralia's Colors isn't an action or epic oriented fantasy tale but instead is a deeper contemplative work that has much to say about art, makers of art and the love of art. At the same time it's also one of the most proficient works of literary art of recent years. The story will hook you, the poetic writing draws you in and the nature of the narrative will provoke though. It's rare to come across such an original and visionary work of literature in the fantasy realm but Overstreet has crafted a unique masterpiece.
A truly unique and beautiful work May 15, 2008
Please understand that, in order to sit down and accurately pen a review of Auralia's Colors, I find myself constantly grasping for just the right word, the exact turn of phrase that will most effectively convey the sheer delicious gravity of the work.
Alas, the word that keeps returning to mind, as well as tongue, is this:
Wow.
In recent memory, I cannot recall a story that has so profoundly managed to capture such rich, vivid detail without reading like a checklist or schematic on how to create a fantasy enviornment. So much within the writing is simply and naturally assimilated, as if the geography, peoples, and customs were not merely being read about, but instead truthfully affirmed as by one immersed in them.
In fact, so multilayered and subtle is so much of the detail that I often caught myself reading too quickly ahead, perhaps a byproduct of both my own impatience as well as a sort of expectation of what would come next. Such slowing down is regrettably a lost art in our world, where almost everything vaults ever forward, leaning against the wind at light-speed; reading Auralia's Colors is like re-discovering what it means to savor, to linger, even to LIVE, in the literary sense evoked by the finest of authors and poets.
And poetic is not too strong an adjective to describe the work, either (although, I fear, however, that even though entirely accurate, will no doubt become overused). Everything within these pages is infused with the natural poetic magnetism neccesary to bind together what will no doubt become a neo-classic story arc (I'm already breathless for the subsequent volume, but also in need of that deep breath between this one and that!) And while so textured in its details, it never fails to allow the reader to engage their OWN imagination to fill in those parts of the narrative that are so expertly crafted as to allow that very sort of thing; such is the aching beauty of the craft that is rendered here.
If a single word were needed to succinctly convey exactly what one might discover within these pages, one that transcended both category as well as expectation, a single adjective should suffice:
Unforgettable.
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