Book Review: The Contaminants, by Devin K. Smyth

Yet another hard sci-fi story of teens surviving in space, The Contaminants would fit well with William Woodall's Tycho. Both feature a desperate flight into space as humanity's last hope of surviving the apocalypse. But Devin K. Smyth's The Contaminants does what Tycho doesn't--create believable, sympathetic narrators and stick to a tight paced storyline. While a few minor details remain fuzzy and some bits of backstory could have been re-arranged, The Contaminants will please any fans of H.G. Wells style of short, hardcore science fiction.

Photoshop glow effect, how I love thee.

When Earth's overpopulation threatens to destroy the planet, the American government conspires to wipe all humans off the face of the earth--save a select group to be sent up in luxury space ships to repopulate the worlds. But when the rest of the world learns about the plot, they declare nuclear war, and only a small fraction of the chosen few survive.

Jessil Callowyck is not one of the chosen few. She and her brothers stowed away on the only surviving ship. With less than a thousand remaining humans, she doesn't think it matters if her genetic sequence is up to par--until the day a video feed from Earth indicates that her father may have survived the blast. Her delight turns to horror when she learns the ship's chief scientist is planning to kill any of the humans remaining on the surface. He doesn't want anyone with 'contaminated', or less than perfect, DNA repopulating the planet.

Soraj Guyat is the mad scientist's son--a teenage boy who helps his father research the conditions of the devastated Earth, but can't find the words to admit his crush on Jessil. He's never broken a rule in his life before Jessil convinces him to help her stow-away on a reconnaissance mission to Earth. It's there he'll have to choose between his friendship with her and his love of his father--if they can survive the mutated creatures swarming over the surface of a world they thought they knew.

Smyth's characters are strong and wonderfully voiced. Jessil's energy and enthusiam contrasts nicely with Soraj's caution and computer-savvy. The world is beautifully rendered--from the ship's broken luxury to the mutated jungles on Earth--and no detail is omitted. I particularly enjoyed the mention of the ship's church, which has been turned into a storage room, because 'people gave up hope long ago'. The devastation, fear, and the tiniest threads of hope are all quite palpable.

While I would have liked Soraj's father's motives to be a little more fleshed out--what's so bad about these humans' DNA that they can't be permitted to reproduce?--I found him a decent antagonist, and the supporting characters, in particular, the ship's Captain Monumba, well fleshed out and interesting. The only major change I would make would be relocating the third and forth chapters (both of which give us Jessil and Suraj's backstories) to later in the story and slimming them down. Like I pointed out in my review for But The Children Survived, after the reader knows that the world's ended, backstory's a killer unless it's extremely pertinent to the main plot.

Other than those minor details, The Contaminants is an excellent story with engrossing characters--and better yet, a plot that moves quickly enough to hold the readers' interest! I think it's apt to compare it to H.G. Wells--especially The Island of Doctor Moreau and The Time Machine. While readers of modern YA may not be thrilled by the lack of romance, fans of classical sci-fi will be thrilled.

My rating? For YA sci-fi, four and a half stars out of five. For a novel, four and a half stars.

You can purchase The Contaminants here. You can also go here and purchase my book, Iceclaw.