Colony by Benjamin Cross an underrated dinosaur horror novel ?

Some days ago I had the opportunity to read the novel Colony by Benjamin Cross and decided to do a review and discuss my thoughts about it. There will be spoilers about It.

A Brief Summary:

Colony is a fast paced story who main character is an archaeology named Callum whose goal is to find any ancient human remains on an remote island in Arctic Russia under request of his terminally ill friend, Jonas. Together with his guide on the island, Lungkaju and his loyal dog Fenris, they find an mummy from a thought to be mythical hero. Meanwhile, the rest of team find themselves stalked by the same creatures that killed the man thousands of years ago - a pack of troodontids that managed to survive the Cretaceous extinction event. After their ship is blow off by a sabouteur, the cientists and soldiers must battle not only the relentless ancient predators, but also the chilling cold and wolf in sheep clothing.

The Review:

As I kept reading I found that Colony is one of the most underrated dinosaur literatures out there, with almost no exposure to It. The writing remains consisting through out the story and some of the main characters have some complexity on them (while others lack severily - more discussed later on). This is no Michael Crichton Jurassic Park, but is an enjoyable and well-written ride and definitly better than some other creatures features out there. It almost feels like a mixture of Jurassic Park with The Terror.

The creatures are very interesting in design and behavior, acting like predatory giant flightless owls with a mixture of penguin. They remain a constant threat to the characters that manage to find themselves outsmarted by them, utilizing the mist to hunt and their camouflage ability (not dissimilar to the Carnotaurus from The Lost World), meanwhile they also remain some of their more animalistic behaviors. They live in a hive like colony where males are the dominants ones.

Now, as much as I like the novel, some things need to be said. First and foremost are how some of the characters fall flat, especially the female characters. The sergeant Koikov I feel needed more depth added to his character, especially since he is one the ones that the narrative focus on.

The main female character - Darya - lacks even more in character. While reading this, I felt that her only function was to act as an love interest to Callum that added motivation for him to survive and act. Some of her aspects - such as being overly horrofied in the creatures and not understanding certain aspects of their behavior and ecology felt unbelivable since she is a zoology and Callum appeared to know more than her sometimes. By the final segment of the novel, not only she remains unconscious for a god portion, but is also taken hostage by the overarching antagonist that orchestrated the expedition and it's sabotage. The same I should extend to the other female character Ava, since most of the time she finds herself scared of heights and with complex fieelings towards one of the antagonists Peterson (later turned anti-hero) - she is not even given a proper character conclusion in the ending.

I don't know how to feel about Lungkaju betrayal and revelation that he was working for the bad guy this entire time. I felt really a last minute addition and especially more unbelivable after his dog Fenris died protecting the team.

I guess these were the major points I wanted to talk about, and if you peple have any more thoughts please share it