W. Michael Gear

Gear, W. Michael. Abandoned. Donovan No. 2. Daw, 2018.
Would you share spit with an alien, who usually gets to know visitors to his planet by eating them? Sounds like a silly question, I know, but somehow W. Michael Gear makes us take it seriously in Abandoned. This second volume of the Donovan series is a lot less like Alien or Predator than was Outpost, the first novel in the series. This time it is more of a survival story than a battle. To his credit, Gear has created an intriguingly show more difficult ecology to challenge his indentured labor force, their corporate masters, struggling science geeks, and marine contingent. Some unknown glitches in the faster than light drive that gets people to the Capella system mean that no one can predict if or whether a supply ship will arrive or how much subjective or planetary time it will take if it does. This means it is even money whether the best strategy is to go native and try to find out how to make terrestrial plants grow in the Donovan jungle, struggle to mine metals for the corporation that sent you, or just hang out at the bar and play a rigged game. All this is made more problematic by the alien population, who have their own challenges dealing with the earthers. One alien is an unwilling guest inside a security agent’s body, and another is bonded as a pet to a nine-year-old girl living in the jungle. All this would be made much easier, if the humans could figure out who is actually running their show and quit killing each other. Good story. I enjoyed it. show less

Even before reading Pariah, I was very happy to know it would not be the last book in the Donovan series, but now that I finished this third installment I’m even more glad that the story will not end here, because this latest novel considerably raised the stakes while still leaving many questions unanswered.

Donovan is so far the only habitable world discovered by humanity and it stands at thirty light-years from Earth: the voyage to reach it is fraught with dangers, mostly because the show more drive technology – which creates a sort of shortcut between distances – does not always work as intended, so that some ships are lost forever or emerge at destination after decades or centuries, the crews having succumbed to hardship or madness. For this reason the colonists of Donovan have learned to rely only on themselves, and had to do it in a very hostile environment: if the planet’s soil is both fertile and rich in minerals, the place is also filled with aggressive flora and fauna waiting only to prey on unwary humans.

Book 1, Outpost, saw the arrival of the ship Turalon, bringing new colonists and a supervisor from the Corporation – the entity ruling Earth and financing the colony ships: what they found was a reality far removed from their expectations and a society ill-disposed to fall again under the thumb of a far-off organization. Book 2, Abandoned, showed us how the new arrivals tried to integrate in Donovanian society, adapting their outlook and goals to the planet’s unexpected environment – and there was also the added mystery of the ghost ship Freelander and its ominous cargo of bones.

Pariah expands on its predecessors by showing us how the characters we know are progressing in their journey: security Chief Talina Perez is dealing with the “infection” from quetzal DNA – they are the planet’s largest predators, and their ability to mix molecules between species might hold the key to communication and, perhaps, a truce; the changes Talina undergoes range from improved vision and hearing to what look like hallucinations that impair her ability to function. For this reason she chooses to leave Port Authority, Donovan’s main settlement, to deal with these changes without endangering her fellow colonists. Former supervisor Kalico Aguila has long forgotten her corporate ambitions and is turning into a worthy Donovanian, not only because she’s learned to integrate with the rest of the colony, but because she takes to heart its well-being, to the point that she’s very serious about the threats against her new home. Dan Wirth, the escaped criminal who arrived with Turalon, has consolidated his hold on the less savory sides of colonial economy like gambling and prostitution, and is now striving for a patina of respectability by building a school, although no one is willing to trust him as far as they can throw him…

As with previous instances, it’s the unexpected arrival of the ship Vixen that upsets the ever-precarious balance of Port Authority, partly because the Vixen has been considered lost for 50 years – while its crew and passengers’ subjective experience was that of an instantaneous travel from Earth to Donovan – and partly because two of those passengers prove highly disruptive, each in his own way.

Dr. Dortmund Weisbacher is an environmental preservationist who made his name and career with a program for the revival of ancient Earth flora and fauna in protected areas and is determined to safeguard Donovan’s biome at all costs: he’s a haughty and self-centered individual with a high opinion of his own value, untouched by the harsh wake-up call he receives once he learns that the planet has already been colonized and that the “contamination” he loathes has become a reality in the past few decades. Not even the information that his carefully maintained preservations failed, because plants and animals had not built an evolved resistance to the current micro-organisms, can shake him out of his blind faith, nor is Donovan able to make him understand its basic principle, that foolishness means grievous harm, or death. Weisbacher’s obtuse lack of perspective helps to drive home once again Donovan’s most important law, the need to adapt to one’s environment to ensure survival, and the fact that this planet does not forgive recklessness or mistakes.

A lesson that the other new player seems to ignore as well: where Weisbacher is merely an annoyance, in the grand scheme of things, Tamarland Benteen is another matter entirely. Ally and henchmen of a Corporation CEO, he boards Vixen just in time to avoid capture by an opposing faction, and once he realizes there is no return to Earth he decides to build his own empire on Donovan by applying the cut-throat methods that served him so well on Earth. Deadly as a poisonous snake and totally without scruples he proceeds to create a power base in Port Authority but, as the arrogant professor, he fails to understand the true dynamics of the colony and its inhabitants. Where I previously hated Dan Wirth with a passion, Benteen made me see how there are several degrees of evil and that the one held by Wirth is clearly not the worst one…

The power struggle that ensues is one of the driving themes of Pariah, and builds an ever-escalating tension that compelled me to keep turning the pages to see where the author would take the story, and for this reason it made Talina’s battle with her inner demons a somewhat less interesting theme than intended. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s a very important subject, made even more fascinating by the journey into the Mayan lore at the roots of Talina’s past, but to me it seemed to take too long and it was somewhat confusing, while all I wanted was to see how the situation in Port Authority ran its course. In the end, all the pieces fit together well (and I’m not using this metaphor at random…) and open the way to a possible change in the relationship between humans and quetzals, but still, seeing Talina helpless in the face of what was happening to her felt so wrong – given the way her personality had been drawn – that I could not wait to get over it all. On the other hand, having the chief security operative out of the way for part of the novel allowed other ‘regulars’ to get more space and to delve deeper into their characters, particularly in the case of Kalico Aguila who is quickly turning into my favorite player. She is still the commanding woman who is used to see things go her way, but she has learned to apply those drives to the common good: Donovan has marked her in more ways than one, but Aguila is one of the finest examples of the maxim “what does not kill us, makes us stronger”.

As a small aside, I would like to add that I was pleased for the confirmation a certain suspicion I had been nurturing from Book 1, about what happened with Cap Taggart: if you read the book you will know what I’m talking about… ;-)

With Outpost and Abandoned, the author introduced us to an epic struggle for survival in an unforgiving environment, but it’s with Pariah that he consolidated his vision of this world and its people: I’m beyond curious to see where he will take us next, and what other dangers and mysteries will face the people of Donovan, but I’m certain that it will be a thrilling adventure.

4 & 1/2 STARS show less

What happens when apes are given human genes and develop a human-like brain, all in the name of making them more capable of surviving the evils man has done to them & their habitat? Such a bonobo is placed in the care of the Duttons, until they are forced to return sweet smart Umber to Africa, where augmented apes may be on a killing spree. Quite a thriller; I loved it, getting to know Umber, and then discovering who was truly evil.

The Donovan series has been one of my favorite stories of alien planet colonization from the very start, and with each new installment it manages to keep fresh and intriguing by adding new faces and new situations to the core elements and characters at its roots. Capella III, a planet 30 light years from Earth, was named Donovan as a tribute to the first casualty from the initial wave of colonists: Donovan is a lush, promising world rich in precious minerals and with an abundance of fertile show more soil, but its nature - be it animal or vegetal - is beyond hostile and the population’s rate of survival is very low, even when taking all the possible precautions.

The original colonists have learned how to come to terms with their new home, but still life on Donovan is a dangerous one, even more so for the new arrivals - uncharitably called fresh meat - and particularly if their journey did not go as planned, as was the case of the ship Freelander, whose subjective journey went on for over a century and is now an empty derelict where weird ghostly apparitions and a mountain of bones are the only passengers; or of the Vixen, that appeared to arrive instantly at the planned destination but was in effect written off as lost for the past fifty years.

In this fourth novel of the saga, the ship Ashanti reaches Donovan after a journey that lasted seven years beyond its expected duration: knowing that the hydroponic tanks could not sustain the whole ship complement for so long, the passengers staged a revolt that forced Captain Galluzzi to seal them off in their deck, thus condemning them to starve to death so that the crew could reach Capella III alive. And yet the transportees somehow survived, led by the crazily charismatic leader Batuhan who turned anthropophagy into a religion, naming his followers the Unreconciled. The arrival of the Ashanti poses a new series of challenges for the Donovanians, who have to deal with a group of cannibalistic religious fanatics who represent both a danger for the colony and for themselves, since they are led by a madman who refuses to take any advice on how to deal with the planet’s threats.

One of main attractions of the Donovan series comes from the fact that the location offers the possibility of exploring new ground - and new dangers! - in each book, since the planet remains fairly uncharted due to its deadly challenges: in Unreconciled we get a glimpse of Tyson Station, a promising settlement that was previously abandoned and where the main characters face both the “old” dangerous critters, like slugs and gotcha vines and so forth, and a new one - a huge, very deadly beast no one had seen before and whose existence is not stored into quetzals’ TriNA memory, apart from a strong feeling of abject terror. And if even a quetzal can be so scared of this monster, you can imagine the kind of havoc it can wreak on humans…

The story itself is carried by the increasing sense of impending menace that comes from various directions: on one side we have the Unreconciled who seem, with only a few exceptions, to have completely bought into Batuhan’s insane belief that by consuming their enemies they will “purify” them and bring about a new, better world - one of the characters at some point states that anthropophagy comes from four basic motivations, survival, ritual, political, and pathological, and that the self-styled messiah has wrapped them all up into a twisted faith fueled by the despair of people facing certain death. Then there are the ever-present quetzals that seem more determined than ever to kill as many of the intruding humans as they can, acting with a cunning and a tactical organization that once again show them as the more formidable foes on the whole planet. And again there are the “simple” human machinations, with the constantly shifting balance of power between the administrators of Port Authority and the crime lord Dan Wirth who finds himself at a crossroads in his search for riches and power. These elements are presented in alternating chapters that keep the story flowing at a fast pace and make for some electrifying sequences that simply beg to turn the pages faster and faster.

But the psychological angle of the characters, old and new, remains the most fascinating aspect of the story still: we see a more settled Talina, who has somehow reached a sort of armed truce with the quetzal essence stored in her consciousness; or a mellowed but still combative Kalico who seems to have found true purpose in a place and situation that’s the polar opposite of what she had in her old life; or again an older Kylee, who has found a way to reconcile her dual nature and reclaim part of her humanity thanks to her bond of friendship/apprenticeship with Talina. The new arrivals, though, offer great opportunities for reflection, in particular where Captain Galluzzi and the Unreconciled are concerned.

Ashanti’s captain is a very tormented man: faced with a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, he’s crushed by the weight of his decision and alternately desires and dreads the moment when he will be called to answer for it, so that he’s stunned when none of the punishment he envisioned is forthcoming, partly because there is no authority on Donovan designated to administer such punishment, and partly because the colonists - even Supervisor Aguila - have seen even direst consequences come from similar situations and know that there is no easy answer to the kind of dilemma Ashanti and other ships faced when confronted with impossible odds. I enjoyed how Shig Mosadek, Donovan’s resident philosopher, tries to help Captain Galluzzi reconcile himself with his actions and how he’s growing from a secondary character into one of the moral pillars of the colony, a delightful blend of wisdom and gentle humor that I’ve come to greatly appreciate.

The Unreconciled and their leader Batuhan, on the other hand, present another kind of dilemma: once the circumstances that brought them to seek survival in horrible ways are over, can they be brought back to the human fold? Can they be considered human still? What’s terrifying is that almost all of them, in a sort of perverted form of Stockholm’s Syndrome, keep believing in Batuhan’s dogma and are ready to follow him along the same bloody, flesh-consuming path even when Donovan starts doling out its deadly lessons. There are no easy answers to these dilemmas, and the book offers none, but the look we are afforded into the Unreconciled’s mindset is at the same time fascinating and horrifying.

There are a number of narrative threads still open in the Donovan saga, which makes me hope that more books in this series will be published: apart from the mystery of the new deadly creature discovered by Talina & Co., there is the angle of the oceanographers landed on the planet from Ashanti with the mission of exploring Donovan’s bodies of water - and if the land is so dangerous, what will the oceans hold in store for our adventurers? And the characters offer many more opportunities for growth that I’m certain Mr. Gear will have many more stories to tell us about them.

Keeping my fingers crossed… show less