Review: The Colony by Kathleen Groger

The Colony
(A Rasper Novel, #1)
By: Kathleen Groger
Publisher: Self-Published
Published: April 5, 2016
Genre: YA Sci-Fi
Rating:

Trust no one.

Never go out in the dark.

Always have a weapon.

Sixteen-year-old Val lives by these three rules etched on her arm. Her rules and her gun are the only things standing between her and assimilation by hordes of human-looking aliens she calls Raspers.

By day, Val gathers supplies. By night, she hides and wishes she could go back in time…before her family died…before the annihilation…before the Raspers began stalking her and demanding she join their collective.

But when the Raspers attack in broad daylight, the truth becomes startlingly clear.

They’re evolving.

A fellow survivor crashes into Val’s life. Adam’s full of charm and promises—like rumors of a safe haven—but there’s something wrong. He’s survived with no supplies, no weapons…no plans. Time is running out. With the formula for survival shifting around her, Val must decide how many rules she’s willing to break to escape the Colony.

My thoughts…

Val’s been on her own for four months. Pretty much, from the moment the Raspers started to take over the world, she’s been fighting to survive. She’s been doing a decent job of it but recently it seems that the Raspers have evolved. They no longer wait until nightfall to come out. They no longer mimic the basic of human movements. No, now they are attacking in the daylight, wielding guns, and driving vehicles. Val finds herself throwing all of her old rules out the window when she teams up with Adam, another teen who has miraculously survived this alien invasion, as they set off to look for a safe haven.

The Colony is a very interesting story. Raspers are apparently these little bug like creatures that poke you with their venom, which injects you with its reproduction serum, where a baby bug will grown onto your brain, and take over your body. Really freaky stuff. How they came to be is slowly discovered throughout the novel, so I won’t give that part away. Seriously though, I kind want to know how the author came up with Raspers. It’s a little twisted and weird to think that something pokes you with reproduction serum and infests you with it baby. Eeeck!

All the characters in this were great. Val is kind of a bad-ass. I mean, she runs around with a gun, shooting Raspers. Actually, the first time she and Adam meet, she shoots him in the arm. I mean, it was his fault after all for literally breaking into a house she was using as a hiding spot for the night. I honestly don’t blame her for shooting first and asking questions later. Adam was also a great character. He’s one of those guys who wants to look out for everyone. At first it’s just him and Val, but then they come across a group of people and you see him start to focus on making sure they are okay, too. He was just a really great guy.

If I’m being honest here, there were times where I felt like I was reading an alien version of The Walking Dead. You know, where you have this one person who teams up with people as they go along, and no matter where they go and how safe they are, something always happens. Yeah, this could easily be a teen version of that show. However, the author made it their own with the whole aliens and colony thing. Apparently the Raspers all follow a queen. Take out the queen. Take out the hive. Or at least, that is what we are lead to believe thus far.

The Colony is a great sci-fi book. There are some dark scenes. So, don’t go into this expecting it to be complete YA fluff. There’s a lot of suspense as the teens try to survive and find a safe place. There’s a tiny smidgen of romance as Val deals with her feeling for Adam. Then there’s the whole sci-fi aspect with the alien things. This book has a lot going on and it was pretty awesome. I look forward to what happens next for Val.

Favorite quote…

“I screamed and crab scooted down the slide. I pushed myself faster. I refused to die on a damn water slide in the middle of an earthquake.”