Genre: Sci-Fi, First Contact
Reviewer: Rari
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About The Book
Once a dedicated pilot, Robin has one final job: to land a ship of pilgrims on a new world. There her husband can work as a botanist among people who share his faith, her kids can grow up in open spaces, and she can settle down to life as a full-time mom.
When she agreed to the idea, it didn’t sound so bad. But now that she’s pregnant with her third child and light years from home, things go sideways.
The colonists’ nature-worshipping religion hides a system of power and control. The planet was promised to be uninhabited, but something is stalking the colony from deep in the forest. And the colony ship will never lift off again.
When Robin ventures into the forest to find out what threatens her people, she finds the line between peaceful pilgrims and rapacious invaders is thinner than she realized.
The Review
Invasive is the second book I’ve read in recent times which had artificial wombs as a futuristic invention, and I love it!
The story revolves around Robin, a pilot who’s taking people belonging to a newly established cult-like religion to a planet where they’ll establish a new Earth. The religion centres around Earth as an entity, a goddess, who wants her followers to make a new place in her honour since the original Earth is more or less destroyed.
Robin’s husband is part of this new faith, though Robin herself doesn’t believe in it. But she’s ready to go to this new world for the sake of her husband and children, the younger of whom is autistic.
However, the new planet is home to a sentient alien species, something the colonisers knew nothing about. It also has hidden dangers arising from the accidental forest fire Robin started attempting to land the derelict spacecraft that’s never going to fly again.
Amidst dangers from the new world and unrest among the colonisers, Robin has to find a way forward for aliens and humans to co-exist in peace.
This book is short, but it packs a punch. I was enthralled from start to finish, and I adored both Robin and Lilly, her autistic daughter. Robin struggles with being a pilot, a parent, and now being pregnant again, something totally new to her, since her previous children were all gestated outside her body.
The religion and the fanaticism of some of its followers feels very realistic, and despite how it all comes down to restoring and respecting nature, the insouciance with which they’re ready to destroy the native flora and fauna of the new planet speaks volumes for the kind of people they are.
Robin shines in this book. There’s no other word for it. She’s very real, very human, and one of the few who wants to do what’s right, and she doesn’t need religion to help her.
The aliens were interesting, and despite being non-human, their emotions felt as human as anything else. Tsaft’s grief for her dead partner is heart rending, and the politics of their society and the obsession with land all resonate with humanity’s greed and possessiveness.
Highly recommended.
The Reviewer
Rari is an author and editor writing under the name of Niranjan K. She is an avid reader of all things fantasy, and loves to discourse at length about her favourite books as well as shows. This blog is the space where she will be sharing her views and insights of the books, shows and movies that she likes.
