Reviewed by Kim Anisi for Readers' Favorite

Carl, the protagonist of Biomass: Rewind by Terry Persun, and his team have a mission: colonize the planet they had decided to call Beauty. Their intelligent spaceship Argentina had dropped them off on the planet after creating them out of biomass. This means that Carl and the others have some memories that aren't their own, especially memories about the planet called Earth. We soon learn that Argentina won't have an issue with getting these humans back, turning them into biomass, and starting all over again if she doesn't like what transpires. If the ship thinks the group is doomed to fail, she won't let them continue. Carl is not the only one in the group who wants to avoid being 'harvested'. He wants to make Beauty their home and wants to have children with his partner Missy and see them grow up in a safe environment. However, Beauty seems to be anything but that.

I rarely change my plans for reading a book, but when I came to the last third of Biomass: Rewind by Terry Persun, I decided not to do what I had planned for my Saturday afternoon but rather finish the book instead. I just needed to know how this would play out. I was pleasantly surprised at the way the whole story developed. I generally get annoyed when science fiction, especially stories about colonizing new planets, relies too much on human drama to be exciting. Sure, there was some human drama in this novel, but the actual plot relied on interesting twists and turns that humans simply had to deal with one way or the other. It was interesting to read about how this group adjusted to life on Beauty, and how they understood more and more about the big challenge they were facing. I would like to read a follow-up about the future of those people 10 to 20 years ahead to see how their life progressed, and surely, the planet would hold a few more surprises. I had a lot of fun reading this novel.