How does the author use imagery in the novel, The Thief?

The author makes wide use of imagery in describing the landscape throughout the novel. When Gen and the others leave the city of Sounis on the circuitous Sacred Way which crosses the King's Route, for instance, they travel through the farms and fields of Sounis, then spend the first night at an inn in Matinaea. Over the next two days, the fields grow smaller and the road turns into a narrow track and finally into an overgrown path as the travelers head toward the Hephestial Mountains. The magus leads the group out of Sounis on foot and through Eddis by climbing nearly unscalable cliffs and descending through deep ravines until they finally reach Attolia. Here, they find that where Sounis "had been brown and baked gold," well-watered Attolia is "shades of green." After the magus purchases horses and supplies, the travelers hurry through the groves of trees in the Sea of Olives which seem similar to the olive groves of the Argolid region or Sterea Ellada of central Greece. At last they reach the dystopia, a barren land which is "as empty as any piece of land in the entire world." There are no trees and the earth is "broken into ridges of rock and rubble." The magus, Pol, Sophos and Gen—leaving Ambiades with the horses—cross the inhospitable land until they reach a large falls on the Aracthus river.