The Colony

Kiel is a fugitive, on the road hiding from his past, and when he stops for the night under a bridge on the Bakke farmstead, he has no way of knowing that his life is about to change. The Bakke farm is the unwitting host to a strange new life form: tiny metallic creatures that will eventually be referred to as “crablets.” Innocently fascinating at first, the crablets quickly become a menace as they multiply and learn to work together, literally joining forces to create larger and deadlier beasts intent on destroying the humans they see as competition. It is only a matter of time before Kiel and the Bakke family are embroiled in a desperate battle for survival.

It would be completely understandable for readers to be skeptical after reading the back-of-the-book synopsis of The Colony; the story sounds a little, well, lame. However, Blaine C. Readler’s novel is a surprise winner! The characters are engaging and the plot is not what you’re expecting. Readler is a writer who knows how to use language to his advantage; the dialogue does not sound forced at all, and while some plot points are patently unsurprising, others come seemingly out of nowhere, which is always refreshing in a thriller. Kiel is a bit of an enigma, with a background story that gets revealed in fits and starts, while Cam, the super-smart-but-mildly-embittered thirteen-year-old, will easily be a favorite. The rest of the characters are a bit cliché: the easily-hated a-hole father/soon-to-be-ex-husband, the family matriarch, the attentive and caring female love interest. The crablets were both fascinating and extremely creepy; the mental imagery of the shapes they formed could potentially be the stuff of nightmares. Overall, The Colony is a great page-turner and definitely worth picking up.