Penal Colony

The Penal Colony - Richard Herley I liked this book. It's well written, and unpredictable. Several times I thought I knew what was going to happen but then the plot turned the other way. I like how the characters don't correspond to the tropes of fiction. It's suspenseful and exciting.The excitement and suspense in the book stem from not knowing what the main character doesn't know, and finding out through him. He needs to find out what's going on, whom he can trust, and so on.Unfortunately, some of this suspense is killed with scenes showing what the other people are up to. This means the reader knows a lot of things the main character does not (for example, whether "The Father" is a good guy or a bad guy) and this ruined much of the excitement for it.If the story had stuck to a single point of view, this book could have been a masterpiece.