Novella - The Wasp Child Young Adult, Science Fiction, Dystopian, YA Aliens
Robot Dinosaur Press
Feb 14, 2023
Kindle
100
Amazon
Caught between two worlds. Wanted in neither.
Kesh is afraid—of his classmates, his allergies, his odd sense of smell, and his prospects for the future. Born into Meridian Colony, where corporate values dictate human worth, Kesh longs for escape. He gets what he asks for in the worst possible way when his classmates kidnap and dump him in the middle of an alien rainforest. Alone.
Faced with certain death, Kesh encounters the sansik, giant insects native to the planet. Though the sansik seem to care for him, their pheromones set off a horrific metamorphosis in Kesh. Claws sprout from his fingertips. A monstrous exoskeleton grows beneath his skin. And then the bugs do the unthinkable: trade him back to Meridian, where life as a living scientific curiosity awaits him, a bleak future void of autonomy.
Caught in a tug-of-war between Meridian's laboratories and a harsh alien world, Kesh has to make a choice: convince his people to accept him, or break free and face an uncertain future alone in an alien world.
Reviewed by Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
This is a story that has a mix of sci-fi and horror and despite the gore and violence it was also a story of inner strength and compassion.
Kesh Ugomi lives in the colony of Meridian under a dome on a planet inhabited primarily of bugs. Kesh’s parents are both dead and he has gone from home to home never knowing love. At school he is constantly bullied, called a parasite and weird and has only one friend, Aster, who is willing to sit with him for lunch. He is always in fear of what his bullies will do, and he learned they were willing to leave him in the rainforest alone and surrounded by sure death.
When he sees a Sansik, the most intelligent life on the planet, a bug capable of speaking with the colonists, Kesh hopes will be his saviors. The large Sansik he believes to be royal and calls her Queenie. Taken to the hive Queenie finally talks to him and advises him that they will return him to Meridian. Although returning to the colony is not a place where he feels safe, at least he will be able to shower, change clothes and not have to consume live bugs.
By the time Kesh gets back to the colony his fingernails are falling out, he is losing his hair and finds himself in quarantine. While in quarantine he learns what he is as his body goes through a transition. Since his birth the ones in charge of the colony have documented everything about Kesh and he realizes he was nothing more than a novelty to be examined and kept alone to be studied.
Kesh knows that his only hope is to escape and prays that the Sansik will protect him. His choices are limited to a specimen to be used by Meridian Laboratories or the risk of being accepted by a species that hates what he is becoming.
A strange story and yet it was the strangeness that kept me glued to it. Gore, violence and yet Kesh was such a sympathetic character I was able to overlook all that and even the fact that the story centers around bugs my Achilles heel.