Summary:
For fans of psychological SF novels like THE GONE WORLD and SIX WAKES
Economics professor Clay West has always explained the world through the lens of his profession. But after his girlfriend Karla takes Dying Wish—a drug that supposedly reveals the nature of reality moments before it claims your life—Clay is devastated. No amount of rationalization can explain Karla’s actions.
Distraught, Clay joins a mission into the dark emptiness of space where answers are promised to reside. But when the ship begins to malfunction, Clay and the surviving crew members suspect there’s more to the mission than they’ve been told. They’ve been lied to, and they’re drifting into dead space.
Clay’s memories of Karla haunt him even more than the ship’s chaos, and there’s something wrong with his memories: he has too many. The ship’s Al tells Clay his false memories are a normal side-effect of the hibernation, but to Clay, the memories suggest something far more insidious.
He’s been on this ship before…
Published: March 26 2024
Pages: 451
Audio: 11hr 27m
Narrator: Craig Brewer
Review:
Ryan Leslie has entered the ‘New School of Sci-Fi Frontrunners’. Colossus truly holds up to it’s title, this is huge-spanning ‘deep’ Sci-fi with a focus on the psychological drama between characters. Colossus explores themes such as AI moral dilemmas, immortality, multiverses, and the nature of consciousness.
After reading Ryan Leslie’s debut horror novel ‘The Between’ I was intrigued by the new author and some of the pretty cool elements he brought to that novel. It wasn’t shortly after I had finished reading The Between when I had heard that he had a Sci-fi book in the works and I knew I had to keep an eye out.
The story revolves around Clay, and we’re introduced to him drinking himself silly on wine, talking to the ships AI on wether he should ‘wake up’ the others. Immediately we’re presented with intriguing questions on who this narrator claims to be and what has happened to the others.
Later on in the book, we take a flashback shift through diary entries, as well as the POV of the on-board AI. There are a lots of layers happening through the mid-section of the book, which does take a bit a of a shift from the first section, building the reader up to the sweet-sweet conclusion.
You’ll be taken for a ride in alternate universes, context in terms of flashbacks, and surrounding it all is ‘Dying Wish’ the pill that unlocks the mysteries of the universe before taking the life of those who choose to take it.
Colossus is quite an ambitious, multi-layered journey and the more it sinks in, the more appreciative you are for the masterwork that Leslie has pulled together. To some it may feel overwhelming and messy, but to others a masterwork of threads twisting the reader into a whirlwind. It’s about revealing what’s truly driving someone to re-connect with a lost love, but also the complexity of human existence and what the mind observes vs what an AI may comprehend.
If you enjoy multi-verse-al, multi POV and timelines smothered with some delicious philosophical sci-fi gravy, and strong character moral-compasses, then you must have a go at Colossus. It’s such a packed meal within these 451 pages, I’m truly hoping this Leslie will maintain momentum, continue to hone his Sci-Fi skill and be at the forefront of a ‘Deep-Sci-Fi’ revival.
For Fans of: ‘Interstellar’, Anne Leckie, ‘Passengers’, ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’
If you enjoyed this I also recommend: Stringers by Chris Panatier
Follow the author – https://ryan-leslie.com/
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