Survival Colony Nine by David Bellin

⭐️⭐️

HUH?

The only thing that exceeds my amount of questions by the end of this book, is my size of doubt when it comes to how many people actually gave this book a 5 star rating. Your standard for star ratings must be really low in order to even give this book even a 4 star rating. Either that, or you are new to reading and reviewing entirely. 

Dislikes

I understand that this is David Bellin’s first book; I really do. However, there were too many flaws and holes in the book for me to overlook it all and a ‘first time author’ excuse just isn’t going to let Bellin off the hook for this one. 

So I'm going to start with the setting and the concept of the book. Overall, I thought this book was a great choice for me because of the dystopian, apocalyptic vibe. Kind’ve a cross between The 5th Wave and The Host which is really what lures me in as a reader. But, this book failed to execute the idea in so many ways. 

I couldn’t understand how the Skaldi had been on earth for 50 years, yet no one knew anything about them. How did they get there? Was there a great Skaldi war? Why are they there? You would think after 50 years, there’d be more info on the alien life-form that wiped out over a trillion people. What little bit of info we DID get, was toward the last couple chapters of the book. 

Also, what about the rest of the world? What does it look like? Why is the colony traveling through the desert? Why is the colony mainly made up of teens and toddler aged kids? People still thought it was a good idea to have kids after around 15-20 years of Skaldi invasion? And if medicine and food is scarce, how were the women able to have successful child births? 

Within the last couple chapters so many bombs were dropped. It was really tacky and rushed. All of a sudden we find out that a Skaldi can converse as itself and not as the person who’s body its taken over. But they can formulate their own thoughts into words. Another bomb that was dropped, were the family relations amongst the colony. Lies that were kept for the safety of our main character, Querry. These lies were superfluous and dramatic and didn’t need to be kept as secret in the first place. 

Oh David Bellin

All these unanswered questions just force me to believe that this book wasn’t thought out. I have a strong feeling that the author just didn’t want to make more work for himself, so he decided he would try to make it to where he wouldn’t have to explain all these details. But details are what make a book. 

I also think Bellin tried to give his readers too many twists and turns. By the end of the book, I wasn’t shocked or surprised. I was confused and my brain was riddled with questions.