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A review by sweekune
Otherlands by Thomas Halliday
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
5/5
I first saw Otherlands in Waterstones whilst visiting my brother earlier this year and was intrigued by the premise. Pretty much everytime I visited a bookshop since I looked for it, picking it up and wishing it would come out in paperback soon. My best friend took pity on me and bought me the hardcover for my birthday. And so my journey through the worlds of the past began.
- Each chapter is dedicated to a time period of the past. The Cenozoic is has more attention paid to it than earlier time periods but it works in the context of this book and it not being insanely long. The worlds are varied. We are shown the Mammoth steppe, ancient Antarctic forests, Jurassic seas, the paleozoic coal swaps that provided our modern day fuel and the early beginning of multicellular life in the sea. Each setting is like a flowing documentary, taking a moment to document several species, the interactions between lifeforms, the landscape, the weather. It is all beautifully described and amazingly well referenced.
- The emphasis put of the complexity of life is wonderful. The author takes time to make sure that the reader is aware that life and ecosystems are complex and multidimensional, every element impacting multiple others. There's no linear producer-consumer-consumer plotlines here.
- The epilogue of this book is both reflective and forward looking. It walks the line between doom and hope we'll when discussing the future of life on earth and the impact humans will have and may continue to inflict. It makes the reader consider the choices our species has to make and the action we will have to take if we want to prevent catastrophic levels of destruction on our planet.
Perfect for me and other paleontology nuts. If you like ancient life and well referenced narrative nonfiction, give this treat of a book a try.
I first saw Otherlands in Waterstones whilst visiting my brother earlier this year and was intrigued by the premise. Pretty much everytime I visited a bookshop since I looked for it, picking it up and wishing it would come out in paperback soon. My best friend took pity on me and bought me the hardcover for my birthday. And so my journey through the worlds of the past began.
- Each chapter is dedicated to a time period of the past. The Cenozoic is has more attention paid to it than earlier time periods but it works in the context of this book and it not being insanely long. The worlds are varied. We are shown the Mammoth steppe, ancient Antarctic forests, Jurassic seas, the paleozoic coal swaps that provided our modern day fuel and the early beginning of multicellular life in the sea. Each setting is like a flowing documentary, taking a moment to document several species, the interactions between lifeforms, the landscape, the weather. It is all beautifully described and amazingly well referenced.
- The emphasis put of the complexity of life is wonderful. The author takes time to make sure that the reader is aware that life and ecosystems are complex and multidimensional, every element impacting multiple others. There's no linear producer-consumer-consumer plotlines here.
- The epilogue of this book is both reflective and forward looking. It walks the line between doom and hope we'll when discussing the future of life on earth and the impact humans will have and may continue to inflict. It makes the reader consider the choices our species has to make and the action we will have to take if we want to prevent catastrophic levels of destruction on our planet.
Perfect for me and other paleontology nuts. If you like ancient life and well referenced narrative nonfiction, give this treat of a book a try.