I recently finished listening to the first 3 books in Gerald M. Kilby’s “Colony Mars” series, and reading “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel in paperback. The stories are quite different… however, I found both to be engaging in some ways, sometimes exciting, but also with irritations that I noticed as I progressed with them. Here’s my quick review of them both…
Colony Mars
Across the 3 books, Kilby tells a good, engaging tale, and I enjoyed listening to them. They come to revolve around Dr. Jann Malbec, a biologist who has joined an expedition to find out what happened to the first Mars colony, called “Colony One”.
The books have a clear, overarching theme around colonisation being not just about surviving the environment, but also about surviving human nature (greed, secrecy, ambition).
Initially we are introduced to what felt like a fairly standard colonisation / post-disaster story. Malbec is somewhat disrespected and marginalised by the mission leader when they land, yet evolves into a strong character, driven to grow by circumstances. They discover that Colony One isn’t entirely dead… someone is hiding. Worse, the crew falls victim to a strange, violent illness and Malbec is attacked. She eventually discovers that Colony One was the site of an illegal (on Earth), covert bio-genetic programme. And a virus was created that could threaten not just the crew, but Earth itself. We ride on the tensions between human colonisation, their isolation on this harsh world, and how the greatest danger may lie not in the environment, but in what humans do to themselves.
The story then pivots towards a sole survivor of the original mission, now stranded and considered a bio‐hazard by Earth. Then another survivor appears from a second outpost, ‘Colony Two’. Barely alive, his DNA matches an original colonist they thought was dead… of course, we’re already guessing that he’s a clone. Malbec takes a perilous journey across the Martian crater to investigate the Colony Two site… and is captured by the geneticists from Colony One and the clones they have created! Well… why not? The themes of abandonment, survival and the unknown grow, as the hidden experiments come into sharper focus.
By “Colony Three Mars”, the stakes go global. The genetic experiments on Mars have been exposed. Multiple factions arrive from Earth to seize control of both the technology and the (cloned) colonists. Ultimately, Malbec holds a solution to the virus that will eradicate it on both Earth and Mars… but she is going to want a lot in return. The core conflict now becomes dual:
1) protect the Martian population (many of whom are clones and unwitting guinea-pigs in the geneticists’ experiments), and
2) prevent disastrous consequences for, and from, Earth.
Be warned that Kilby has an annoying habit of constantly calling his main character “Dr Jann Malbec”, over and over and over again… after a while, just Malbec would have sufficed. And Malbec often makes stupid decisions, some of which had me shouting “are you really that daft?” Then, moments later, she would criticise herself for those same mistakes. At first this did not feel authentic, but I later came to appreciate it as a fictional naivety born from a more innocent world view. Also, for me, the reading on the Audible version was clear, but rather flat and emotionless – this did not spoil the story, just don’t go expecting high-octane reading.
Station Eleven
At the same time, I was also reading “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel. This book simultaneously interested, intrigued and annoyed me.
I loved the idea of telling a post-apocalyptic story through the lens of a small, wandering band of survivors who perform Shakespeare’s plays in the settlements they pass. What writer doesn’t appreciate Shakespeare?
The story begins on the night that a devastating flu pandemic begins to spread across the world (reminiscent of Terry Nation’s ‘Survivors’), and we are then frequently taken back to those times in flashbacks and reminiscences. For me, those “look backs” became intrusive, diluting what could have become an even more powerful story set in the present. They may also be what helped the book to win some awards and now apparently be translated into an HBO television miniseries.
The book has themes around “… because survival is insufficient”, faith, loss, and the fragility of civilisation. It shows how some lives have intertwined before and after disaster, contrasting the emptiness of fame and technology with enduring values of storytelling, empathy, and culture.
One could say that Mandel’s narrative is about humanity’s quiet resilience, showing how art preserves the best of what it means to be human, even when the world falls away. However, for me, the travelling theatrical troupe did not ultimately feel realistic, and I was left unsatisfied by their actions and motivations. Tellingly, I skipped around 70-100 pages of what felt like waffle to me, trying to seek out the core story that was happening in the ‘now’… and I did not get a satisfying ending.
Lee J. Russell, Author 