**The Many-Colored Land ** is a science fiction novel by American author Julian May, published in 1981. It is the first book of the Saga of Pliocene Exile (known as the Saga of the Exiles in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth). The novel sets the series up by introducing the story of each of the characters. The main purpose of the book is to provide information for the rest of the series, only beginning the main storyline in its final part.

Characters

Group Green

There is a lady sweet and kind, Was never face so pleas'd my mind; I did but see her passing by, And yet I love her till I die.

Other human exiles

Bryan Grenfell's beloved, a woman of Celtic ancestry who never felt 'at home' in the Mileu goes into Exile and is discovered to have grandmaster-level latent creative metafunctions by the Tanu. Her power and beauty attract Nodonn Battlemaster who takes her as his wife and later proves that she has some Tanu ancestry in her DNA, causing shockwaves among Human and Tanu alike considering the 6-million year time gap between the Tanu/Firvulag ascendancy and the rise of Humanity, while also explaining how metafunctions manifested in the Human gene pool in the first place.

The Tanu

The Firvulag