Clara’s Verdict
Thomas Halliday’s Otherlands is one of those rare works of popular science that justifies the word ‘literary’. The book’s concept — sixteen deep-time ecosystems brought to life through the fossil record — sounds like a thought experiment. In Halliday’s hands, it becomes something approaching a form of time travel. The Sunday Times called it potentially the best book of 2022, and while hyperbole is a critical occupational hazard, I understand the impulse entirely. This edition of the audiobook is the Spanish-language version, narrated by Pep Papell — something worth noting clearly before purchase. For Spanish-speaking listeners or those looking to experience an exceptional piece of science writing in translation, it remains a compelling listen across 12 hours and 41 minutes.
About the Audiobook
Halliday, a palaeobiologist at the Natural History Museum, reconstructs sixteen distinct moments in Earth’s history — from the Cambrian through to the comparatively recent Pleistocene — using evidence from the fossil record, isotope analysis, and current scientific understanding. Each chapter is set in a specific location and time, rendered with sensory precision: the sounds, smells, and visual landscape of environments that no human eye has ever observed.
The accumulation is extraordinary. Giant penguins, three-metre fungi, feathered reptiles, crystal reefs — Halliday’s past Earths are simultaneously alien and hauntingly familiar, because the underlying biological and ecological principles at work are continuous with those operating today. The book functions both as a celebration of life’s astonishing diversity and as a quiet, deeply felt warning: these worlds ended, in many cases catastrophically, and the patterns are not entirely historical. Halliday’s prose has a poetic register that some readers find intoxicating and others find occasionally excessive — Spanish reviewer responses reflect exactly this split, though the consensus tilts strongly positive.
The Narration
Pep Papell delivers the narration with measured authority. The material requires a voice that can sustain long descriptive passages without losing the listener, and Papell manages this well. The pacing is appropriately unhurried — Halliday’s writing benefits from space to land — and the production quality from Penguin Random House Audio is clean throughout. One Spanish reviewer recommended the original English edition for those with the language, suggesting something may be lost in translation, but the Spanish version remains a high-quality production in its own right.
What Readers Say
Reviews from Spain and Latin America are warmly positive. The phrase « espectacular » recurs. One reviewer praised the storytelling across each ecosystem and found the combination of fact and narrative prose « natural » rather than laboured. Another, while noting the slightly poetic framing as an occasional stylistic obstacle, nonetheless called it « a great compilation » of current knowledge about Earth’s ecological evolution. Tom Holland called it « the best book I have ever read about the history of life on Earth. » Lewis Dartnell described it as « absolutely gripping. » It holds a 4.4 rating across 119 reviews on Audible UK.
Who Should Listen?
Primarily for Spanish-speaking listeners who love popular science or natural history at a literary level — the equivalent of a Richard Fortey or David Attenborough in written form. It’s also a valuable choice for bilingual listeners who want to experience an acclaimed work of science writing in a different language. Comparable titles include Peter Brannen’s The Ends of the World and Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish. Available on Audible UK and compatible platforms. Listen to Otherlands (Spanish edition) on Audible UK and journey back through deep time.
