All the World's Colors

The Queen of the Blue

By: James W. George

Narrated by: Angus Freathy, Mindy Escobar-Leanse

Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Book one of a brand-new, epic fantasy series by master historical story-teller, James W. George.

Something inconceivable has happened, and all the world's colors are about to bleed....

Kellia. Kellia the Red. Pagan, seafaring warriors of ancient renown. They have sailed west, ever west, and have discovered an awe-inspiring, unknown land. Is it their salvation, or the seed of their destruction?

Merova and the Throne of Blue. Wealthy, cultured, and the ultimate matriarchy. Kellia’s ancient nemesis, and a realm of secrets, intrigue, and treachery.

The Holy Domain of Sanctia. Piety, sacrifice, and faith. They have a spiritual duty to spread the truth across the seas, and they will sail under the sacred banner of green.

The Confederation of Orange. Cynical, profiteering financiers and lovers of pleasure. If there is a new discovery in this world, they will be poised to exploit it.

Fans of historical fiction and fantasy will delight in this epic saga of empire, conflict, and power.

©2020 James W. George (P)2020 James W. George

Many flags of floating colors

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review. The book starts what promises to be an amazingly interesting fantasy series by showing the reader tantalizing glimpses of mysteries and the political ties that bind that fantastical world together. And, with tension pulling on each thread of yarn, it leaves the reader waiting expectantly for the next book in the series to see how the entire map is torn asunder and woven anew.

Intriguing

This is the first book I have read/listened to by this author and I would like to listen to another. I’m curious where this series is going.
I like the idea of adding colors to the disparate cultures/ societies and that one is a male and the other is a female dominated society.

This is the first book I have listened to by both these narrators ( Angus Freathy, Mindy Escobar-Leanne ). Angus narrates the chapters with the male led societies. During parts where the Kellians sing or chant he adds sound effects. I’m not generally a fan of sound effects because they tend to be overpowering or just plain unnecessary or even annoying. In this case, the issue is the sound effects overpower the volume of the narration. Not only is the narration therefore harder to decifer, but it’s made worse with the narrators change in pacing. He speaks faster and less discernible. Otherwise his pacing and cadence is good and character voices vary and are well done. He performs this book nicely. ———Mindy narrates the female led societies. She performs the book rather than just read it. Her style is that of natural speech and she does well with the different character voices. Her male voices are great and each character is discernible.

There are no explicit sex scenes, or excessive violence, there is swearing. ——-

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and voluntarily left this unbiased review.
Please feel free to comment on whether you found my review helpful.

Story 4/5
Narration 5/5

Two Stories in One

Overall: 4 Stars
Story (Book): 3.5 Stars
Narrative Performance: 5 Stars

All the World's Colors is the story of four vastly different cultures vaguely similar to European historical peoples, and as the title implies, each culture is associated with a colour. Kellia the Red, Merova and the Throne of Blue, The Holy Domain of Sanctia (Green), and The Confederation of Orange. Merova is a typical European-inspired fantasy kingdom, but with a matriarchal structure. Kellia is reminiscent of the Vikings. The Confederation of Orange remind me of the Ferengi but with honour. The Holy Domain of Sanctia are, surprise surprise, a society of enthusiastic evangelists.

I enjoyed the portions of this story that were about Merova and young Prince Marcel, stuck with what would normally be the fate of a princess in a patriarchal monarchy, facing a future of being strategically married off to some other kingdom.

The other main story the book keeps coming back to is that of Jarrow, sailing off on tasks of war and land acquisition and trying to keep his nephew from embarrassing him (and himself.) It gets particularly interesting when his bumbling nephew gets high on some strange purple smoking leaves and appears to have acquired the power and knowledge of a god.

In between these stories, however, are other shorter stories from different points of view that add little to the main story arcs other than adding to the lore of the world. They're clearly meant to be part of one or the other main arc, but they don't quite fit. Between those and the choices made on were to split off and jump between main stories made it difficult keep track of what was going on. In the audiobook version the two arcs are narrated by different actors with very different voices (male and female) yet this was not enough to make me realized we had jumped storylines half the time. My brain just accepted that some characters were one voice and some were the other, but didn't associate the two voices with the different storylines. Again, I think this is because of how and where the stories switched.

Narrators Angus Freathy and Mindy Escobar-Leanse are immensely talented voice actors who I would love to listen to again. Mindy is particularly good with accents and making sure each distinct character sounds different in some way. Angus has a knack for adding just the right amount of sound effects that I really enjoyed.

I was granted complimentary access to the audiobook edition of All the World's Colors by James W. George through Audiobookworm Promotions in exchange for an honest review as part of my participation in the blog tour for this title. Thank you to both James W. George and Audiobookworm Promotions for this opportunity. This has not swayed my opinion. My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Surprised and left wanting more when it ended

This was a short introduction to several worlds. Touching on 4 main 'countries', the author was able to build a backstory for all of them, while also leaving so much to be explored. The Red chapters were my favorite and I can't wait to see where they're going. My main gripe with the plot was in the story of Blue; I saw where the story was going and I was trying to guess how it was going to get there...then I actually laughed out loud when the narrator said "[Character X] could scarcely recall how the next few moment transpired"; somewhat solving the implausible plot turn in those chapters.

The narration was great overall as well, very easily able to differentiate between characters and intonations/dictation were on point. Overall, this was a great start to a series that I'm excited for the next one!

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.