Review: Lost Colony

Lost Colony by A.L. White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lost Colony has a classic science fiction plot and all the story elements you could ask for in a SciFi adventure. However, the delivery of those elements is a bit lacking. The dialog all feels forced as if it's just there to explain things to the reader and push the story forward. Other than the captain and ship's doctor, the characters are mostly flat and undeveloped -- which is odd because several attempts were made to introduce bits of background for some of the other characters, but those teasers were never fleshed out or affected the storyline. It made for characters that were easy to mix up but the characters pretty much served interchangeable roles in the plot -- primarily as military grunts to be ordered around by the captain.

There are definitely parts of the story I really enjoyed, however the end of the book felt rushed and the plot started to unravel a bit at the end. There are a few plot holes at the end that perhaps the reader is supposed to fill in, but it leaves much of the story feeling incomplete. If this is a prequel novella for a larger series, it does serve its purpose for introducing a series, but as a stand-alone story, it's average and ends leaving you with many questions. It’s not a bad book, but it’s not a great one either.

The narration may have led to the average feelings I have for the book. It's not the worse narration I’ve ever heard by any means (I wasn’t tempted to just stop listening), but there was little there that I would have even called a “performance.” The narrator pretty much just read the story and though the main few characters had unique voices, most of the voices were so similar you wouldn’t be able to identify a character without their name being mentioned. The action scenes were the worst part of the narration, as the narrator never sounded excited, scared, happy, or expressed much of any emotion; everything was delivered with the same flat, even tone.

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

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