Colony Mars: The Complete Trilogy

By: Gerald M. Kilby

Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella

Length: 17 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

How can a colony on Mars survive when the greatest danger on the planet is humanity itself?

All contact is lost with the first privately funded colony on Mars during a long and destructive sandstorm. Satellite imagery of the aftermath shows extensive damage to the facility. The 54 colonists who called it home are presumed dead.

Sometime later, a new mission sets down on the planet surface to investigate what remains of the derelict site, and crew biologist Dr. Jann Malbec soon discovers that the facility had developed into to a full-blown human DNA editing experiment - with unsuspecting colonists as the guinea pigs.

However, now that the truth of what was going on in the colony is revealed, powerful Earth-based corporations begin to fight for control of this extraordinary genetic research. But Dr. Malbec begins to realize that returning this technology to Earth could doom humanity to a worldwide pandemic of apocalyptic proportions. She must do everything she can to prevent that from happening - even if it means that she might never see her home planet again.

©2017 Gerald M. Kilby (P)2019 Gerald M. Kilby

As we think about going to Mars, I hope that the explorers can control their worst instincts.

I was definitely entertained by this series and hope that the billionaire class driving much of space exploration ambition could benefit by this story.

Intriguing

Nicol performed awesome , kept my attention throughout the book. Looking forward to the next book.

Bad hook, yet great story.

The "mysterius disease" troupe is badly overused and, in my opinion, borin. When I first found this troupe as a central plot element, I considered putting the book aside. But I gave it a chance.

I am glad I did. It has been quite the adventure. and the final plot twist regarding the disease, revealed at the end of part 3, gave me the laugh of the day, if not the week. I am eager to hear part 4 now.

story is good, ending is flat

parts are good.Most is meh it served its purpose. Some of the charters don't make that much sense.

Mediocre story with crap narration

I bought the series because it was a value. As it turns out, you might get what you pay for. The narrator put you to sleep at times and mispronounces many common things. The only thing worse than her pronunciation was the tone in which she read everything. It was much like Siri dictating something to you. How this person got a job and voice acting is beyond me. Unless you can download this for free, I would skip it. There are many better titles out there.

Excellent pacing

An entertaining story, well performed, character development is good, world building is good. Interesting antagonists.

Relaxing Listen.

Some of the foreign accents blurred, but it was otherwise very relaxing to listen to. The drama and emotion projected well.

Great narrator, fun plot

Went through the first three books in about a week - loved the narrator. Plot was good and flowed very well.

At least the narration was passable

I ordered this trilogy with great anticipation and have ended up being so disappointed that I have stopped listening partway into book two. Character development is flimsy and full of clichés, and while the storyline was initially quite interesting, it devolved from the fantastical into the absurd. I fully support the notion of suspension of disbelief, but I wasn’t able to employ it here. Morphing a tank full of biological goop into a fully formed adult human? Yes, I am aware that humans have developed the ability to clone beings, including mammals, but the technology to do so the way it’s portrayed in this story is so ridiculous that it would take centuries to develop from where we are now. Even if we do accept the existence of such capability in the story, the rest of the technology in the book would be so antiquated that it’s nonsensical to put them in the same timeline.

The narrator did create characters voices dissimilar enough that it was fairly easy to interpret who was who, although the “bad” characters in this story all seemed to have been given a predictable eastern European accent, aside from the monotone hybrid human clones. The main antagonist, Dr. “Vongi” (sp?) fulfilled every stereotype that one might find in a poorly conceived James Bond villain, so much so that I imagined the character to be akin to Mike Myers’ portrayal of Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies.

It bothers me that our protagonist and hero, Dr. Jann Malbec, was initially portrayed as approaching incompetent at the beginning of the story. This is despite the fact that this character has a PhD and has been through extensive training to be an interplanetary traveler, even if she is a backup crew member. There are myriad examples where this story takes predictable turns and presents ridiculously implausible scenarios, but it would take a much longer essay to share them all. Unfortunately, what began as a very intriguing storyline became a bit of a mess, as did the writing in general, which deteriorated in quality over the course of the trilogy. My sense is that the author himself became bored with the story and just mailed it in to meet a publisher deadline. If you are looking for literary work that compels the reader such as the works of Arthur C Clark or Isaac Asimov, I submit that you’ll be sorely disappointed, just as I am of myself for wasting a credit on this.

Great Mars Adventures, Realistic!

Loved the book a great adventure, topics and challenges very real, possibilitys, a pleasure to read...