The novel “The Lost Colony” by A.G. Riddle was published for the first time in 2019. It’s the third book in The Long Winter trilogy and follows “The Solar War“.
A group of survivors try to create a new city where human civilization can be reborn. Some environmental problems must be addressed and the mystery of what happened to the humans who had already attempted to create a colony remains, as they seem to have disappeared into thin air.
James Sinclair searches for traces of the missing colonists but finds spheres buried underground. Is there a connection between the spheres and the lost colony? His search is made more difficult by the fact that he doesn’t know how much he can trust the android Arthur, especially when the answers it provides are far from clear.
“The Lost Colony” concludes a trilogy that is one big story, so you need to read it in its entirety. In this final novel, A.G. Riddle tells the story of the attempt of the survivors of the war against the alien civilization known as the grid to rebuild human civilization.
James Sinclair and Emma Matthews remain the protagonists, and their points of view are the ones that are followed, just as in the previous novels. In some ways, the story departs from the previous chapters in the sense that A.G. Riddle explores different kinds of problems for humans. What was an apocalyptic story in the various phases of the war with the grid becomes a decidedly post-apocalyptic story with ramifications that take it down paths that sometimes are truly surprising.
The cosmic dimension becomes an important element in “The Lost Colony” after having been considered especially when it was connected to the grid. Some of A.G. Riddle’s cosmological interpretations contradict current models and observations but if you are not interested in an astrophysical plausibility of the story, you will have no problem.
For some readers, the problem may be that the new developments in the plot make “The Lost Colony” complex and uneven. The impression is that A.G. Riddle put together three different stories, four if we include an extra published by the author on his website on a page linked at the end of the novel. The linear plot was a virtue of the previous novels but in this final novel it’s anything but linear.
In my opinion, the plot that sometimes becomes convoluted takes away strength from some important themes of the trilogy that had further developments in this novel. In trying to rebuild human civilization, the survivors wonder what is the right way to use the technologies they managed to save. James Sinclair’s invention had cost him prison and is still at the center of controversy. The choices made by the survivors show once again that humans can be their own worst enemies.
From the beginning, the trilogy gave me the impression that it was better to try to enjoy the action and the twists rather than reflect on the events that were being told. “The Lost Colony” confirmed this impression with a book that still has the merit of offering a conclusion to the story that offers answers to various questions that were left here and there in the previous books. It goes beyond classic science fiction and apocalyptic stories and some readers may not appreciate the new developments but if you read the first two books, I recommend you get to the end. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
