Lia: Human of Utah by Greg Ramsay

Lia: Human of Utah is a duology about a dystopian sci-fi world and the effects of a virus and alien invasion.

Lia wakes up alone with no idea of who she is and is shortly thereafter attacked by a monster; an abomination that humans have evolved into. Somehow she has the skills to fight back but when more monsters join in, she realises she is outclassed. Her body assimilates some of the dead, which replenishes her and she soon realises that she now has an alien consciousness in her system. Lia goes out into the world and finds a band of human soldiers who immediately do not trust her. Lia vows to work with them but something at the back of her mind constantly nags that she needs to remember. As more evidence comes to light as to how the world was decimated by a strain of virus, Lia and the crew fight new monsters and Lia learns to control her shifting. But everything she thought she understood about her change and indeed the world might be completely wrong...

The title and front cover drew me to the book, and the idea of humans and aliens assimilating and sharing a host was intriguing. The descriptions of the armour and its creation and movement along with the tendrils was explained very well. I found the fight scenes very laborious, though, as each action was described, whether blow or duck and the fights (there were many) went on and on. Lia’s character was strange, and she went from being one with compassion to ice-cold killer to selfish leader. The fluctuations were jarring at times, as was her dialogue. In book one she adopted a standoffish manner of speech and in book two her dialogue was littered with “cuz” amongst others and then would veer off into “high speech” again. In book one there were a few punctuation editing mistakes but nothing major, yet in book two there were a lot more, and mistakes like your/you’re and lightning and lightening. The writing almost felt like it was a different person between the books.

Unfortunately, I was never vested in Lia or her journey. I only felt a slight bit of empathy for her at the end as you realised what she would have to go through forever. But it was as if she brought it on herself, as her motives and actions were always about her. Some sections of the books flew by and others were so drawn out I was tempted to skip pages. It is a great base idea but could do with some serious streamlining as the parts where I could really get into the story were overshadowed by the parts that were superfluous.

Thanks to Voracious Readers Only and the author for a copy of the book.