Colony Launch by Jon Del Arroz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A disenchanted former politician, a man imprisoned for a foolish mistake, a security officer with PTSD, and a biologist living in the shadow of her father all find new purpose for life when Fabio DePino builds a starship to take colonists on a one-way 100 year trip to a distant planet, there to start a new life far away from Earth’s war with the violent Aryshans.
This story follows four primary protagonists, all with their own interesting journeys, which come together near the end. This book is the story of how these people came to be on the colony ship, so you’ll have to wait for the sequel to see them settling into their new world. However, that doesn’t mean you won’t see alien worlds and spaceships. Colony Launch has surprisingly a lot to offer.
I enjoyed all the characters but I especially felt sympathy for Dalton, a largely honest businessman who finds himself in jail for signing documents without reading them, thus being found culpable for his boss’s criminal activity. Surrounded by dangerous criminals, his only chance to protect himself might be to get in with some nasty individuals. Even the promise of travelling to this distant colony might not be enough to get him out from under the thumb of the notorious spider clan.
The climax was a thrilling. It brought all the characters together and really helped me reframe the way I saw the prisoners.
The Aryshan War series run parallel to this story, which I’ll be checking out, but I’m very much looking forward to following the story of these colonists in Ixora Colony book 2.
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