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A review by verkisto
Blood Colony by Tananarive Due
3.0
MAN, it took me a long time to finish this book. I like Due's style, and her plots have been interesting, but somehow Blood Colony took me about three weeks to finish. Even other, drier books haven't taken that long. Somehow I just couldn't stay engaged with this story like I did with her other two books (though The Living Blood took me about two weeks).
I do like how Due shifts her themes around from book to book. Each one has been a look at immortality, but where My Soul to Keep was a personal look, and The Living Blood looked at it from a more epic perspective, Blood Colony is a mixture of the two, since Due introduces us to a competing group of immortals while showing us Fana as she attempts to become her own person. As the two groups intersect, we see that the blood reveals a new power, and what it suggests is chilling. It's reminiscent of Carrion Comfort, in the way that the immortals can control other people, but it's not a carbon copy thriller.
I like where the book takes us, but I felt like it was a lot of story for not a lot of payoff. Part of it, I think, is how much ground Due has to cover. Not only does she have to give us the history of the new group of immortals, but she also has to show us what's happened with Fana over the last fifteen years or so. Since both stories take us to the same conclusion, we need them both to get the whole story, but it can sometimes feel long-winded.
The characterization feels weaker here, too. It may be due to Due bringing in so many characters, but I didn't feel the kind of connection with Fana and Jessica like I did in the first two books. I expected it to be the other way around, since by now I should be familiar with them, and Due wouldn't need to spend as much time developing them, but somehow I felt the distance. The book forces them apart, so the distance there is physical, but I didn't expect that to be true of them in the story, too.
Due gives the story a good depth, showing Jessica and Fana having started up a commune to disperse the blood for its healing effects, but the story doesn't have the same OOMPH as the first two books. There's one more book left in the series (so far; apparently, readers thought this would be the final book in the series, which would have been a disappointment), and I'm hoping Due can bring it back with that book. I'm eager to be finished with the series so I can move on to other books on my list.
I do like how Due shifts her themes around from book to book. Each one has been a look at immortality, but where My Soul to Keep was a personal look, and The Living Blood looked at it from a more epic perspective, Blood Colony is a mixture of the two, since Due introduces us to a competing group of immortals while showing us Fana as she attempts to become her own person. As the two groups intersect, we see that the blood reveals a new power, and what it suggests is chilling. It's reminiscent of Carrion Comfort, in the way that the immortals can control other people, but it's not a carbon copy thriller.
I like where the book takes us, but I felt like it was a lot of story for not a lot of payoff. Part of it, I think, is how much ground Due has to cover. Not only does she have to give us the history of the new group of immortals, but she also has to show us what's happened with Fana over the last fifteen years or so. Since both stories take us to the same conclusion, we need them both to get the whole story, but it can sometimes feel long-winded.
The characterization feels weaker here, too. It may be due to Due bringing in so many characters, but I didn't feel the kind of connection with Fana and Jessica like I did in the first two books. I expected it to be the other way around, since by now I should be familiar with them, and Due wouldn't need to spend as much time developing them, but somehow I felt the distance. The book forces them apart, so the distance there is physical, but I didn't expect that to be true of them in the story, too.
Due gives the story a good depth, showing Jessica and Fana having started up a commune to disperse the blood for its healing effects, but the story doesn't have the same OOMPH as the first two books. There's one more book left in the series (so far; apparently, readers thought this would be the final book in the series, which would have been a disappointment), and I'm hoping Due can bring it back with that book. I'm eager to be finished with the series so I can move on to other books on my list.