Genre: Sci-Fi
Reviewer: Beáta
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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
We are in the future, generations after Earth has become uninhabitable. Most humans live in a crowded space station, but there are also attempts of colonizing new planets. Robin’s family is part of one of those projects, hoping for space to raise a big family and practice their religion, which everyone in the colony follows except for Robin.
Pregnant with her third child, she was the pilot who flew them to their new home, and is now left somewhat without a purpose. What is worse: She soon discovers that the planet they landed on isn’t actually free of intelligent life. Nobody believes her, the religious community is becoming more and more cult-like, and they are up against the clock: If they don’t manage to establish a functional settlement with a stable food source before the ship’s batteries run out, then everyone will die一including Robin’s family.
Invasive is an interesting take on the space colony genre, tackling the much-asked question “what if the planet we’re on is already inhabited?”. These stories usually devolve into the colonial us vs them narrative, where either the humans are evil invaders and the aliens pure and innocent, or the other way, the aliens evin savages and the humans righteous and civilized.
Jenné is doing a fairly good job at avoiding both clichés, presenting us with two complicated societies plagued by prejudices, class divides and growing religious extremism. I also very much appreciated the importance of motherhood as a theme, and the focus on legacy and lineage. And it was interesting to have a pregnant woman to be the hero of a space adventure.
It is no secret that I very much like Jenné’s writing, and am always more than happy to read and review her books. That having been said, I did enjoy this one a little less than the others. In part, it is because of the aforementioned importance of motherhood and religion as themes, which I am both generally less interested by. It is a personal preference.
This is also the kind of story that cannot possibly go well. While the book manages to keep the fallout of this clash between species to a minimum, it is of course still there, and still gives you a very strong feeling that the protagonists should not be there and are only causing harm. This is, of course, the entire point. Once again, my dislike is due to personnel preferences, more than to the content of the book.
All in all: I would absolutely recommend this novel. The worldbuilding will please science fiction fans, and so will the complexities of the alien culture and of Robin’s colony. The way that everyone is acting feels very realistic, and, once again: It is a nuanced take on a very well-known trope.
Jenné is currently my favorite science fiction author, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.
The Reviewer
Beáta Fülöp is an aspiring filmmaker and writer. She identifies as aromantic and asexual, and has an autistic Special Interest in the representation of minorities. One day, she will use this knowledge in her own stories. Until then, she is happy to sit here and give her opinion on other people’s hard work.
