Colsec Trilogy, The (1984)
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Fiction Review by The Gravedigger
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04.15.04
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THE COLSEC TRILOGY (1984) by Douglas Hill. This trilogy consits of EXILES OF COLSEC, THE CAVES OF KLYDOR and COLSEC REBELLION.Hundreds of years in the future the earth is dominated by 'The Organization', which keeps its citizens oppressed and in poverty. When they colonize new worlds, in order to exploit their resources,they don't send their Colsec citizens-they send up 'scards' or discards, youths who would otherwise be sent to prison. They ship them to a planet and then send in a Colsec survey team to check up on them six months later. One of these groups crash lands on a planet named Klydor-and only six of the twelve individuals survive. They are Cord, a giant from the Highlands, Samella, a computer genius, Rontal and Jeko, members of the street gangs of Limbo and Heleth, a young woman who belongs to the 'vampires', the people who live in the tunnels and bunkers beneath London. There's also a guy called Lamprey, who once worked for the Colsec military as a 'Crusher', an insane soldier. They are all very different culturally-but have to work together in order to survive.In the first book, EXILES OF COLSEC, they encounter the planet's natural wildlife, which includes intelligent trees and these savage humanoid looking animals which seem to tend to them. Samella gets these horrible headaches when she's near them and it turns out she's partially psychic and is picking up their fear of her and the rest of the humans. Lamprey wants to be in charge of them and takes their only weapon, a laser rifle which survived the crash. He taunts the others-and they eventually rebel and kick him out of the group. But he swears to get them all. There's also problems with the aliens, particularly after Lamprey kills a few of them. Basically, they all have to survive each other and adapt in order to survive. The one who ultimately dies is the Lamprey character, who is killed by the aliens.In THE CAVES OF KLYDOR the group continues to journey across the planet. They travel down an immense river, through 'the badlands', an area very different than the forest they originally crashed in. They also encounter other creatures, the most dangerous among them this snake-like creature with a killing beak.It's in this book that they find out they are not the only humans on the planet. An adult has crashed in his escape pod, an adult who turns out to be a famous space explorer. But he's on the run from the crew of a Colsec ship, who has learned he's the leader of the Rebellion. The group of kids end up helping him- and after a long, nerve-racking battle, defeat all of the soldiers. In COLSEC REBELLION the group of survivors, along with their new friend, decide to go back to earth to recruit more of the gangs to help in the rebellion. The plan is to take them off planet and back to Klydor, where they can build a large resistance. Their plans don't quite go as expected and they are almost executed. Of course, they get away and manage to steal a ship with the help of some new recruits. In the end they are responsible for the Rebellion against Earth's oppressive organization succeeding.Although these three slim books should have been made into just one five-hundred page book, they are nevertheless a good, quick read, about survivors on an alien world.
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Rating: nan out of 10.0 - votes cast total
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