Everyone has a
dark side, right? Everyone has secrets.
But what would
you do if you woke up one morning and didn’t know anyone you used to know? What
would you do if everything you used to know about your friends and family had become a secret?
That’s the
situation Querry Genn, the fourteen-year-old narrator of Survival Colony Nine, finds himself in. Querry suffers from
traumatic memory loss, so he doesn’t know who anyone is--including himself. And
that’s especially bad in Querry’s world, a future world where small colonies fight
for existence in the aftermath of catastrophic wars. In this world, memory is
both incredibly fragile and incredibly precious. So much of the past has been
lost, the survivors can’t afford to lose any more.So Querry struggles to recover his memory, to remember the people in Survival Colony Nine, to relearn the drills and rituals necessary to survive in the hostile desert the planet has become. But Querry can’t recall anything that occurred before his trauma, and he grows more frustrated and impatient with each passing day.
But that’s not
the worst of it.
The worst of it
is the Skaldi, creatures that appeared on the planet after the wars of
destruction. No one knows what they are or where they came from, but one thing
is certain: they possess the ability to consume human beings and mimic the
people they consume. Without remembering the members of the colony, Querry can’t
be certain anyone is who they say they are. Anyone could be Skaldi in disguise.
His father. His
former friends. The colony’s scouts. Anyone.
Even himself.
The darker side
of Querry Genn is this uncertainty, the fact that he doesn’t know who to trust,
who to believe. The darker side of Querry Genn is the hidden self that might
lie within him, or within those closest to him. That hidden self might be an
actual monster. But it’s also the terrible doubt he carries, the feelings of
suspicion he can’t admit to anyone.
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