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Lands of Red and Gold #1
Walking Through Dreams
Imagine a world where a new crop, the red yam, emerged in Australia thousands of years ago. The red yam changed societies across the continent as a new form of farming spread.
When Europeans first visit Australia’s shores, they find a land that is alien to everything they know. A land of many new cultures, of ancient cities, proud warriors, new faiths, and dangerous diseases. A land of gold and spices. A land of temptation, where the European trading companies seek to claim new wealth wherever they can find it.
This is the tale of the new cultures which emerged in changed Australia, and of the collision of cultures when Europeans arrive. A tale of commerce and would-be conquistadors. A time of challenge, where the question is whether this new land of gold will also be stained with blood.
When Europeans first visit Australia’s shores, they find a land that is alien to everything they know. A land of many new cultures, of ancient cities, proud warriors, new faiths, and dangerous diseases. A land of gold and spices. A land of temptation, where the European trading companies seek to claim new wealth wherever they can find it.
This is the tale of the new cultures which emerged in changed Australia, and of the collision of cultures when Europeans arrive. A tale of commerce and would-be conquistadors. A time of challenge, where the question is whether this new land of gold will also be stained with blood.
- GenresAlternate History
629 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 28, 2019
13 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
About the author
Jared Kavanagh
16 books20 followersJared Kavanagh is an Australian author of alternate history and other speculative fiction. He took up writing as an occupation after trying over seventy other jobs in his life. He has worked in fields such as town planning, sales, customer service IT, mediation, occupational rehabilitation, academia, and many others. None of those jobs have lasted more than a couple of years. He plans to keep writing for much longer than that.
His shortest job lasted three hours. He had been told the job was graphic design, but when he started the job turned out to be data entry. So he went on an early lunch break and never came back. He quickly learned not to list most of his jobs on his résumé after one interviewer asked him when he was going to stop his career promiscuity. He decided it was easier to stop listing most jobs than it was to stop the career promiscuity.
His shortest job lasted three hours. He had been told the job was graphic design, but when he started the job turned out to be data entry. So he went on an early lunch break and never came back. He quickly learned not to list most of his jobs on his résumé after one interviewer asked him when he was going to stop his career promiscuity. He decided it was easier to stop listing most jobs than it was to stop the career promiscuity.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 7, 2021
Full thoughts here: https://youtu.be/sHFaDEmyjMs
For what this book sets out to do, it's a very solid 4 stars. I personally enjoyed it as more of a weak 3 stars, but the amount of research and effort on display forced me to bump it up.
For what this book sets out to do, it's a very solid 4 stars. I personally enjoyed it as more of a weak 3 stars, but the amount of research and effort on display forced me to bump it up.
December 14, 2019
Jared Kavanagh, well known in the Alternate History community for his groundbreaking work "Decades of Darkness", turns to his native Australia's history in this ambitious and compelling story of a world unlike our own. When Dutch explorers find Australia in the seventeenth century, they discover not the barren shores that led them to turn back in our history, but thriving Aboriginal civilisations, driven by the existence of a staple crop that does not exist in our history. But with civilisations also come diseases, and both Europe and Australia devastate one another with the exchange of pathogens, knocking European history off course as kings die as well as peasants. This fascinating new world is one which any reader would be privileged to explore, and the depth of research is staggering - highly recommended.
December 14, 2019
"Lands of Red and Gold" (aka LORAG) is one of the stories that turned alternate history from an interest of mine to a passion. Jared Kavanagh has shown incredible imagination, creating numerous societies, cultures, and religions, all of which are still recognizably Aboriginal. This was the first timeline I ever read to incorporate biology in a major way, with the flora and fauna of Australia shaping their civilization just as wheat, cows, and horses shaped the West. Beyond his creativity, Jared might also be the single best wordsmith I've seen in the alternate history genre. He turns what could be dry descriptions of botany and zoology into something almost like poetry.
LORAG is one of the finest works of timeline-based alternate history I have ever read, and has been an incredible inspiration for my own writings. I cannot recommend this series enough.
LORAG is one of the finest works of timeline-based alternate history I have ever read, and has been an incredible inspiration for my own writings. I cannot recommend this series enough.
January 29, 2022
Venturing out of my normal fare with this slightly odd book, but I'm certainly glad I did.
After reading Dark Emu, I found myself wondering about the main thesis of this book one day - what if geological conditions had been different and created a chain reaction that led to the development of agricultural settled societies in pre-contact Australia like in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or the Indus Valley? - and thought I'd look to see if anyone had written anything about it. I googled it, found this, and was blown away.
The amount of attention to detail and research really shines through in this amazing book, half pseudo-nonfiction history book and half-novel, about an alternate history where a random (and lavishly explained) genetic mutation in a certain type of native yam leads to its cultivation and the development of increasingly complex settled societies. If you're wondering "hm I wonder what [x] would have been like in that scenario" Kavanagh's got it covered, with extremely educated speculations on politico-economic, military, and religious development, its effects on local ecology, farming and trade, clothing, and daily life. The author seems to have a really solid grasp of all of these areas, and basically anything else you can think of. As I said, the attentioned to detail really is extraordinary.
Only nitpicky things prevent me from giving it the full 5 stars, like that personally I found the first couple of chapters repeated a lot of information (though this was only at the beginning) and the time-jumps in the narrative section made it a little hard for me to follow.
4.5/5
After reading Dark Emu, I found myself wondering about the main thesis of this book one day - what if geological conditions had been different and created a chain reaction that led to the development of agricultural settled societies in pre-contact Australia like in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or the Indus Valley? - and thought I'd look to see if anyone had written anything about it. I googled it, found this, and was blown away.
The amount of attention to detail and research really shines through in this amazing book, half pseudo-nonfiction history book and half-novel, about an alternate history where a random (and lavishly explained) genetic mutation in a certain type of native yam leads to its cultivation and the development of increasingly complex settled societies. If you're wondering "hm I wonder what [x] would have been like in that scenario" Kavanagh's got it covered, with extremely educated speculations on politico-economic, military, and religious development, its effects on local ecology, farming and trade, clothing, and daily life. The author seems to have a really solid grasp of all of these areas, and basically anything else you can think of. As I said, the attentioned to detail really is extraordinary.
Only nitpicky things prevent me from giving it the full 5 stars, like that personally I found the first couple of chapters repeated a lot of information (though this was only at the beginning) and the time-jumps in the narrative section made it a little hard for me to follow.
4.5/5
December 14, 2019
A interesting and compelling delve into an alternative history of Australia’s native cultures and their contact with European countries.Jared Kavanagh has offered an alternative to alternative history books focused solely on European or North American cultures and history,providing a great reading with the more advanced civilizations that have appeared in this timeline’s Australia and that are on a more equal footing with the Europeans powers that desire to conquer,but can’t.
January 17, 2022
Frankly, boring.
May 2, 2020
Walking Through Dreams is a brilliant entry into the Alternate History genre. Combining strong narratives and and exhaustive research, it strikes the right balance between a plausible world and an imaginative one. Each of the chapters are uniquely informative on their chosen topic, in particular in terms of hypothetical domesticates and their possible culinary applications. Fantasy foods are an old and popular trope, but they are rarely as tantalising as they are here given that they are actually very much possible, if only in need of a little modern domestication.
One would be forgiven for not realising that this work considerably pre-dates Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu, but nonetheless it is also now a highly topical work and is a welcome and unique addition not just to the Alternate History genre but also to the current discourse on Aboriginal land management and economics.
I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in either field, and eagerly await the next instalment.
One would be forgiven for not realising that this work considerably pre-dates Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu, but nonetheless it is also now a highly topical work and is a welcome and unique addition not just to the Alternate History genre but also to the current discourse on Aboriginal land management and economics.
I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in either field, and eagerly await the next instalment.
January 12, 2021
Great read😊
This book is a great read for people that likes alternative history. Even though it is fiction, it grounded in believable possibilities. I would have like timeline to be more linear but it was not to difficult to follow.
This book is a great read for people that likes alternative history. Even though it is fiction, it grounded in believable possibilities. I would have like timeline to be more linear but it was not to difficult to follow.
December 16, 2019
A magnificent work of alternate history fiction by Jared Kavanagh, known for the seminal "Decades of Darkness". What if Australian Aborigines had had the staple crops needed to found river valley civilisations like those on other continents? What might Australia look like by the time Maori and Dutch explorers arrive - and what impact would it have on the wider world? Highly recommended.
July 23, 2022
What if Australia had developed an agricultural, urban civilisation before Europeans arrived on the scene? Jared Kavanagh begins Walking Through Dreams with the mutation of a species of red yam into an agricultural founder crop around 4000 BC, supplemented by wattle seed (hence "Lands of Red and Gold").
The first half is largely big-picture (pre)history told by an omniscient narrator, with occasional references to the errors and disputes of historians and archaeologists in the alternate timeline, and only a handful of chapters with point-of-view characters. While appreciating the need for world-building, I thought a lot of this could have been relegated to appendices. Much of the cultural detail seems rather arbitrary, neither following logically from the Australian environment, nor particularly relevant to the later story. It is, however, convincingly drawn and may be somebody's cup of tea. Personally I was more interested in the inland and riverine development of the alternate Australian civilisation, compared to the coastal pattern of British settlement, and the implications of perennial staple crops, such as a larger surplus to feed cities and a winter campaigning season. Kavanagh appears knowledgeable about botany, certainly more than I am, and discusses many domesticable species. There are a few maps at the back, but I didn't discover them until I finished the text because the Kindle edition lacks a table of contents. A timeline and glossary would also have been useful (you can find some at alternatehistory dot com).
The second half, after European contact is made in the early 17th century, picks up the pace with the political, trading and military maneuvers of the various Australian and European nations, along with their internal factions and civil wars. It is much more engaging and readable, with a wide cast of characters, while still developing the alternate timeline.
I have a couple of quibbles with the mechanics of the story (minor spoiler alert). Firstly, the use of twin points of divergence - the initial mutation of the red yam is followed by Maori contact around 1300 AD. While this is technically plausible and serves to introduce better seafaring technology, it is somewhat inelegant, goes against the conventions of the genre, and also seems unnecessary - surely multiple urban civilisations on an island continent would have developed navigation themselves, even if not to Polynesian levels? Secondly, without giving too much away, the alternate Australia punches implausibly above its weight in epidemic diseases, domesticable crops, and warfare one European contact is made.
Overall, though, this is a thoroughly researched, imaginative, and reasonably well-written book, enough to make me look forward to part two. It may not be the best introduction to the alternate history genre for new readers (unless they are keen botanists, anthropologists, or Australian history buffs), but for established fans it's worth a try. Just feel free to skim the early chapters, and come back to them later.
The first half is largely big-picture (pre)history told by an omniscient narrator, with occasional references to the errors and disputes of historians and archaeologists in the alternate timeline, and only a handful of chapters with point-of-view characters. While appreciating the need for world-building, I thought a lot of this could have been relegated to appendices. Much of the cultural detail seems rather arbitrary, neither following logically from the Australian environment, nor particularly relevant to the later story. It is, however, convincingly drawn and may be somebody's cup of tea. Personally I was more interested in the inland and riverine development of the alternate Australian civilisation, compared to the coastal pattern of British settlement, and the implications of perennial staple crops, such as a larger surplus to feed cities and a winter campaigning season. Kavanagh appears knowledgeable about botany, certainly more than I am, and discusses many domesticable species. There are a few maps at the back, but I didn't discover them until I finished the text because the Kindle edition lacks a table of contents. A timeline and glossary would also have been useful (you can find some at alternatehistory dot com).
The second half, after European contact is made in the early 17th century, picks up the pace with the political, trading and military maneuvers of the various Australian and European nations, along with their internal factions and civil wars. It is much more engaging and readable, with a wide cast of characters, while still developing the alternate timeline.
I have a couple of quibbles with the mechanics of the story (minor spoiler alert). Firstly, the use of twin points of divergence - the initial mutation of the red yam is followed by Maori contact around 1300 AD. While this is technically plausible and serves to introduce better seafaring technology, it is somewhat inelegant, goes against the conventions of the genre, and also seems unnecessary - surely multiple urban civilisations on an island continent would have developed navigation themselves, even if not to Polynesian levels? Secondly, without giving too much away, the alternate Australia punches implausibly above its weight in epidemic diseases, domesticable crops, and warfare one European contact is made.
Overall, though, this is a thoroughly researched, imaginative, and reasonably well-written book, enough to make me look forward to part two. It may not be the best introduction to the alternate history genre for new readers (unless they are keen botanists, anthropologists, or Australian history buffs), but for established fans it's worth a try. Just feel free to skim the early chapters, and come back to them later.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews