Today I’m reviewing Colony One: A Space Colonization Adventure (The Elderon Chronicles Book 1) by Tarah Benner.

I picked this one up for free on Amazon.. sucked in by one of the daily deal emails I receive. At least I can’t get in trouble from spending too much money on books this month eh? Ha

Here’s the blurb

Colony One is prepared for anything — except the saboteur who’s already on board.
For Jonah Wyatt, the Space Force is his last shot at a military career. After years leading an elite task force, he was discharged from the army and stuck working one menial job after another. Now this disgraced combat specialist is headed to space. He’s tasked with training his own unit aboard Elderon: colony one.
Nobody bothered to tell him it would be a squad of white-hat hackers and intel eggheads who are definitely not Space Force material. One recruit is Maggie Barnes — an undercover reporter who was brought on board as a member of the press corps. Her job is to create fluffy corporate propaganda that paints the colony as a futuristic utopia, but Maggie can’t follow the rules once she gets wind of a story.
When Maggie gets a tip from an unknown source, she realizes Elderon is not at all what it seems. As she gets closer to unraveling the conspiracy, Sergeant Wyatt begins to suspect that there’s a spy on board. The saboteur has been with them all along, and he’s been building an army of his own.

Review

So Colony One follows two main characters, Jonah and Maggie.

Jonah is ex-military, he’s clearly got baggage from his time serving and is definitely not happy with his life at the moment so when offered the chance to join Space Force he jumps at it.. what’s he got to loose.

We also meet Maggie, a reporter who is slowly being side-lined by artificial intelligence.. no one needs real reporters or news any longer.. the only thing they want is trash.,, but Maggie is the real deal.. she’s worth more than this so when she is offered the chance to join an expedition to Elderon, a space colony it doesn’t take long for her to decide.

While on Elderon Maggie can’t but help let her reporter instincts kick in. Something isnt right.. there’s a lot of military personnel…Space Force…. why.. where’s the danger?

Soon she has her way in.. a fake identity.. Maggie ends up under the command of Jonah and tensions grow between them in more way than one… but who is helping her.. it’s not exactly easy to get the documentation in place that they have.. what’s their motivation?

While in training things heat up and I really loved how the author showed each recruits development.. or lack of ha. As time passes and it’s clear the recruits aren’t cut out for this we we learn of a new device that may lead to recruits learning the skills needed faster.. but is it too good to be true.. it’s kind of a freaky piece of technology…abruptly we are forced to forget about this bit of kit as a cyberattack hits.. the bots that people depend on have turned on humans.. but it is an isolated incident and how did the hackers get into such sophisticated systems.. something isnt right here.. but what.

What I enjoyed about the book was the nice mixture of plot and character development. I’ve seen some negative reviews simply because this book doesn’t have an ending.. it’s book 1 in a series and I’ll forgive some as the book as been out since 2018 but to me the book set things up perfectly for a series..that cliff hanger ended was the perfect setup and hooked me.. I’ve already bought the next book in the series to see what happens next.

The pace and development of the plot was good and there’s a clear direction but I would have just loved to have seen a few more scenes between Maggie and Jonah to really build on their development. Saying that I think the author did a great job of the inner monologue.. to help you understand where the characters were at emotionally and knowing there’s more for me to read leaves me in little doubt I’ll see the development I love between characters.

Flow wise this book was super-fast and fun, the style of writing makes it very easy to follow, mix in an intriguing plot and for me it’s a strong 4 star book.

To find out more head to Goodreads or Amazon!