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vondav's review against another edition
4.0
After a major earthquake had destroyed their world, the story follows the four groups who live in this world.
The Pale are human who have upgraded their bodies using technology, feeling more superior than the other groups, they lived their lives surrounded by a big wall. The tribe were a nomad group who spent their time trading mainly with the Settlement whose main purpose was to protect their gene pool and if you were deemed to be not assessed, your life was there to serve and finally the Canini a group of highly intelligent dogs that can communicated by mind thought.
The story started off slowly as you are introduced to the four groups and the major players. At first, I was getting a bit confused of who was who in the story. But after a few chapters I soon got into the story and began to recognise the characters making the story flow smoothly. Each couple of chapters was dedicated to a certain group and as you carry on with the story, you are following the groups as they adjust to a changing lifestyle.
The detailed description from the author, enable you to understand the dynamics of each group and like in real life there were characters that did not like the direction that the groups were going. This story will bring out quite a few different emotions as you get immersed in the character’s lives. If you are like me you will have your favourite characters and you will pick the characters you love to hate.
This dystopian story is not your predictable good v evil and it is a story that will draw you in. You will want to carry on reading it to find out what is going to happen to the world, groups and characters. I am glad that book 2 is out as I need to know what is going to happen to these four groups.
The Pale are human who have upgraded their bodies using technology, feeling more superior than the other groups, they lived their lives surrounded by a big wall. The tribe were a nomad group who spent their time trading mainly with the Settlement whose main purpose was to protect their gene pool and if you were deemed to be not assessed, your life was there to serve and finally the Canini a group of highly intelligent dogs that can communicated by mind thought.
The story started off slowly as you are introduced to the four groups and the major players. At first, I was getting a bit confused of who was who in the story. But after a few chapters I soon got into the story and began to recognise the characters making the story flow smoothly. Each couple of chapters was dedicated to a certain group and as you carry on with the story, you are following the groups as they adjust to a changing lifestyle.
The detailed description from the author, enable you to understand the dynamics of each group and like in real life there were characters that did not like the direction that the groups were going. This story will bring out quite a few different emotions as you get immersed in the character’s lives. If you are like me you will have your favourite characters and you will pick the characters you love to hate.
This dystopian story is not your predictable good v evil and it is a story that will draw you in. You will want to carry on reading it to find out what is going to happen to the world, groups and characters. I am glad that book 2 is out as I need to know what is going to happen to these four groups.
maitaylor01's review against another edition
4.0
The Pale is the first book in what promises to be an excellent sci-fi/fantasy series. A large part of part one of the book is dedicated to familiarising the reader with the environment and it’s inhabitants, and although this means it is a bit of a slow starter, the number of different species and the way they live means that such intricate world building is essential to give a broad enough understanding of the post-Conflagration existence. Sometimes it is tempting to rush straight into the action of a story, but I find that more often than not this just leaves me with more questions, and I am so glad that Clare Rhoden took the time to introduce us gently to her world, and did so in exquisite detail. For a world so far removed from our current one, I found I could picture each character and habitat perfectly.
By part two, I found that I was completely invested in the characters and had become really attached to a few of them. I found that I was particularly drawn to the canini, and the sacrifices they had to make broke my heart. I also grew fond of Kilimanjara and Feather of the Storm, and I enjoyed their family dynamic.
This definitely strikes me as a series that needs to be read back to back – certainly by the time I had reached the end of The Pale, I was very glad that I had Broad Plain Darkening already lined up to read.
By part two, I found that I was completely invested in the characters and had become really attached to a few of them. I found that I was particularly drawn to the canini, and the sacrifices they had to make broke my heart. I also grew fond of Kilimanjara and Feather of the Storm, and I enjoyed their family dynamic.
This definitely strikes me as a series that needs to be read back to back – certainly by the time I had reached the end of The Pale, I was very glad that I had Broad Plain Darkening already lined up to read.
shortandsweetreviewsbysam's review against another edition
2.0
I was so looking forward to this book but just couldn’t get into it! Will definitely try again when I’m not in such a reading rut
samanthapearl's review against another edition
3.0
Thank you to the author and Rachel's Random Resources for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own and are not influenced in any way.
Goodreads Blurb:
The Outside can be a dangerous place.
But so can the inside.
It’s been years since the original cataclysm, but life has been structured, peaceful, and most of all uneventful in the Pale. The humachine citizens welcome the order provided by their ruler, the baleful Regent.
However, when one of their own rescues a human boy, Hector, from ravenous ferals on the Outside, their careful systems are turned upside down.
As Hector grows more and more human-strange, the citizens of the Pale grow uneasy.
What will happen when the Outside tries to get in?
The Pale takes us to a time when the world has been destroyed and humans have attempted to rebuild what is left. We have the humachines, mechanically altered humans, canini, genetically altered canine and a whole cast of characters created with some outside-the-box thinking.
What I Didn't Like:
It was hard to keep focused on this book. There's a lot going on so you need to be paying attention to keep it all straight. I found myself getting bored which led to getting lost and had to reread certain things to keep track of what was going on. To me, I found a lot of filler in the book that took away from the actual story. This is a slow-paced novel, which is something I dislike in general.
What I Did Like:
The canini. I absolutely loved them. The canini are altered canines with thumbs and the ability to mindspeak. Who wouldn't love for their dog to mindspeak to them? There was just something about them that really grabbed my attention. Their parts were done very well and was definitely my favorite parts of the book. The Temple Lady. This lady is a character you hate to like. She isn't the nicest person in the book, far from it actually, but she is enjoyable in a god-I-wanna-slap-her way. You know, the type of character that you don't like as a person but you enjoy reading about them anyway. There are a whole cast of characters in this book that are enjoyable.
The ending picked up a bit for me. There are a few events that happen near the end that set up for book 2 Broad Plain Darkening in the sense that you want to find out what happens next. I feel like it seemed the story begun but never really went anywhere, just minor events to start a snowball later on.
Rating this book is difficult because while I didn't particularly enjoy this book it does have a lot of good qualities that I think others would enjoy. Overall I feel neutral about the book. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it.
You can find this and all my other reviews at https://fourmoonreviews.blogspot.com/?m=1
Goodreads Blurb:
The Outside can be a dangerous place.
But so can the inside.
It’s been years since the original cataclysm, but life has been structured, peaceful, and most of all uneventful in the Pale. The humachine citizens welcome the order provided by their ruler, the baleful Regent.
However, when one of their own rescues a human boy, Hector, from ravenous ferals on the Outside, their careful systems are turned upside down.
As Hector grows more and more human-strange, the citizens of the Pale grow uneasy.
What will happen when the Outside tries to get in?
The Pale takes us to a time when the world has been destroyed and humans have attempted to rebuild what is left. We have the humachines, mechanically altered humans, canini, genetically altered canine and a whole cast of characters created with some outside-the-box thinking.
What I Didn't Like:
It was hard to keep focused on this book. There's a lot going on so you need to be paying attention to keep it all straight. I found myself getting bored which led to getting lost and had to reread certain things to keep track of what was going on. To me, I found a lot of filler in the book that took away from the actual story. This is a slow-paced novel, which is something I dislike in general.
What I Did Like:
The canini. I absolutely loved them. The canini are altered canines with thumbs and the ability to mindspeak. Who wouldn't love for their dog to mindspeak to them? There was just something about them that really grabbed my attention. Their parts were done very well and was definitely my favorite parts of the book. The Temple Lady. This lady is a character you hate to like. She isn't the nicest person in the book, far from it actually, but she is enjoyable in a god-I-wanna-slap-her way. You know, the type of character that you don't like as a person but you enjoy reading about them anyway. There are a whole cast of characters in this book that are enjoyable.
The ending picked up a bit for me. There are a few events that happen near the end that set up for book 2 Broad Plain Darkening in the sense that you want to find out what happens next. I feel like it seemed the story begun but never really went anywhere, just minor events to start a snowball later on.
Rating this book is difficult because while I didn't particularly enjoy this book it does have a lot of good qualities that I think others would enjoy. Overall I feel neutral about the book. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it.
You can find this and all my other reviews at https://fourmoonreviews.blogspot.com/?m=1
malve396's review against another edition
5.0
Riveting dystopian fiction
When reading the first in this series of three books by Clare Rhoden, I felt a bit like an anthropologist experiencing culture shock in the course of doing fieldwork among a little known culture. In fact, she created four complete sets of cultural contexts, that is, four very different sets of communities trying to survive in the aftermath of a major cataclysmic event. These are the humachines, the tribes, the people living in what was called the settlement, and the canini, a world of canines with an ability to communicate through mindspeak. The connecting link is Hector, a young man who had been orphaned only to be raised in a society of people altered and enhanced by technology to such an extent that they are described as humachines by members of the other societies. The world building is phenomenal, with vivid details injected into the story.
The author has created a fascinating, multilayered, and complex world. At times, I felt a bit overwhelmed, bouncing around among the various cultures. But that is not a criticism; if one sticks with this book, one is richly rewarded. Several themes are raised throughout the book—the challenges of communication among groups with entirely different cultural expectations, questions of ethics, for instance in regard to population control as well as exploitation of labor, and questions of what makes a viable community. Throughout the reader is reminded that cultures change constantly and that some patterns of behavior that may have been adaptive at a certain point in time need to be reconsidered. Just like anthropologists have repeatedly discovered in the course of such fieldwork, the strange and inexplicable after a while becomes more comprehensible at the same time as one finds a number of familiar patterns of behavior and cultural dynamics. The “other” is not as different from oneself as one might think.
When reading the first in this series of three books by Clare Rhoden, I felt a bit like an anthropologist experiencing culture shock in the course of doing fieldwork among a little known culture. In fact, she created four complete sets of cultural contexts, that is, four very different sets of communities trying to survive in the aftermath of a major cataclysmic event. These are the humachines, the tribes, the people living in what was called the settlement, and the canini, a world of canines with an ability to communicate through mindspeak. The connecting link is Hector, a young man who had been orphaned only to be raised in a society of people altered and enhanced by technology to such an extent that they are described as humachines by members of the other societies. The world building is phenomenal, with vivid details injected into the story.
The author has created a fascinating, multilayered, and complex world. At times, I felt a bit overwhelmed, bouncing around among the various cultures. But that is not a criticism; if one sticks with this book, one is richly rewarded. Several themes are raised throughout the book—the challenges of communication among groups with entirely different cultural expectations, questions of ethics, for instance in regard to population control as well as exploitation of labor, and questions of what makes a viable community. Throughout the reader is reminded that cultures change constantly and that some patterns of behavior that may have been adaptive at a certain point in time need to be reconsidered. Just like anthropologists have repeatedly discovered in the course of such fieldwork, the strange and inexplicable after a while becomes more comprehensible at the same time as one finds a number of familiar patterns of behavior and cultural dynamics. The “other” is not as different from oneself as one might think.
pixiejazz's review
3.0
The Pale is the first book in the Chronicles of the Pale series, and it's definitely a wild read. I did struggle with getting into at first, because there is a lot to take in and keep track of, but after a bit, everything started to click in my head and make more sense to me. I found myself curious and wanting to know more.
The Pale is set in the future. There was an event known as the Great Conflagration, and now the world has changed. The book focuses on four main groups of characters.
There's the humachines of the Pale. They're a mash-up of humans and machines. Their city is walled, and they tend to keep to themselves. Anything or anyone that wanders too close is usually killed or taken in to be studied/recycled for food/upgrades/etc. They're ruled by a woman known as the Regent.
Then there's the Canini. They're intelligent wolf-like dogs that can mindspeak to one another and some humans. They also have opposable thumbs. They mainly keep to themselves, but will run with the humans if necessary.
There's the Tribes, a group of humans who live in the South (I believe) and trade with the humans of the Settlement. Some of the tribe can mindspeak with the Canini and use it to learn about what's going on in their new world.
And there's the Settlement, a town of humans who follow a strict code where only those deemed worthy are allowed to procreate and live a more comfortable life.
The book jumps into things with a humachine named Tad discovering a wailing human child outside the gates of the Pale. His mother is dead (killed by ferals), and he's all alone. Tad decides to bring him into the Pale, which doesn't sit well with the others, but they figure they can use him. He's trained to work with Tad, but the more he grows, the more human he seems, even with the modifications the Pale provides. What happens when the Regent decides Hector and Tad are no longer worthy of being citizens of the Pale? You'll have to read it and find out.
I don't want to give too much away, because I know I'll spoil things, so I'll just say this: If you enjoy though-provoking, intelligent dystopian fiction, you'll want to check out The Chronicles of the Pale. Although the first book was a bit slow to get going (at least for me), and I struggled a bit, I found it intriguing and engaging, and by the time it ended, I was eager for more.
I'm rating it 3.5 stars.
The Pale is set in the future. There was an event known as the Great Conflagration, and now the world has changed. The book focuses on four main groups of characters.
There's the humachines of the Pale. They're a mash-up of humans and machines. Their city is walled, and they tend to keep to themselves. Anything or anyone that wanders too close is usually killed or taken in to be studied/recycled for food/upgrades/etc. They're ruled by a woman known as the Regent.
Then there's the Canini. They're intelligent wolf-like dogs that can mindspeak to one another and some humans. They also have opposable thumbs. They mainly keep to themselves, but will run with the humans if necessary.
There's the Tribes, a group of humans who live in the South (I believe) and trade with the humans of the Settlement. Some of the tribe can mindspeak with the Canini and use it to learn about what's going on in their new world.
And there's the Settlement, a town of humans who follow a strict code where only those deemed worthy are allowed to procreate and live a more comfortable life.
The book jumps into things with a humachine named Tad discovering a wailing human child outside the gates of the Pale. His mother is dead (killed by ferals), and he's all alone. Tad decides to bring him into the Pale, which doesn't sit well with the others, but they figure they can use him. He's trained to work with Tad, but the more he grows, the more human he seems, even with the modifications the Pale provides. What happens when the Regent decides Hector and Tad are no longer worthy of being citizens of the Pale? You'll have to read it and find out.
I don't want to give too much away, because I know I'll spoil things, so I'll just say this: If you enjoy though-provoking, intelligent dystopian fiction, you'll want to check out The Chronicles of the Pale. Although the first book was a bit slow to get going (at least for me), and I struggled a bit, I found it intriguing and engaging, and by the time it ended, I was eager for more.
I'm rating it 3.5 stars.
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