Review this Book   Get your Signed copy today! Amazon Deborah K. Frontiera Deborah K. Frontiera Category:  Fantasy Publisher: Jade Enterprises ISBN-10:  0975341070 Type: Fiction Pages: 218 Copyright: Jan. 2, 2019 ISBN-13: 9781975341070 Price: $17.95 (eBook) This is the long-awaited 4th book of The Chronicles of Henry Roach-Dairier, a future world without people. Think Planet of the Ants, not Planet of the Apes, for young adults and adults.  The Chronicles of Henry Roach-Dairier continues, but the torch of chronicling the events has passed to the original Henry's grandson and namesake. Some twenty to twenty-five thousand years after the extinction of human beings, the earth is quite different. It is dominated by highly evolved, large and intelligent ants, cockroaches, and other "wild" insects. Ants live communal lives, dedicated to each other, while roaches are materialistic and self-centered. Both species are chemically dependent upon plastic--mined from the landfills of the long-extinct duo pods--the most valuable resource of the ant/roach world. Plastic is vital to the mental development of ant larva and roach nymphs. Without it, they reach adulthood physically and mentally impaired. After the death of his grandfather, young Henry Roach-Dairier II promises to research and complete the story of how the any colonies formed the Combined Colonies of Insectia. In this setting, one roach official, whose plastic mine has run dry, forcibly takes over a nearby ant colony. A second roach does the same to another colony but takes it to the extreme, slaughtering the entire colony and then taking over his rival's interests and depriving his ant slaves of the plastic their young need. Young Henry Roach-Dairier finds there is much more to what happened than what is taught in either culture. In revealing the entire story, he places his own life in danger. The formal release date for this title is Jan. 2, 2019, but advance copies for review are available through this site.    Excerpt See the place to download a sample chapter on this site.

Professional Reviews
Fourth Book in Insect Fantasy is Metaphor for Human Efforts to Whitewash
Fourth Book in Insect Fantasy Series Is Metaphor for Human Efforts to Whitewash History
Inception of the Combined Colonies is the fourth book in Deborah K. Frontiera’s The Chronicles of Henry Roach-Dairier. The first three novels centered on Henry, a roach adopted by ants and raised in their combined colonies. I have not read the previous three books, but I was not at all lost since this fourth book really begins a new segment of the series, introducing Henry Roach-Dairier’s grandson and namesake, Henry Roach-Dairier II. The novel takes place approximately twenty- to twenty-five-thousand years after human extinction when Earth is dominated by highly evolved, large, and intelligent ants and roaches.
Henry lives in a world that has long been one where ants and roaches live in communion, but after his grandfather dies, Henry begins to research the history of how the ant colonies created the Combined Colonies of Insectia. What he learns is shocking to him. The story then alternates between Henry’s experiences in making the discovery and the ancient documents he finds that reveal a history that has been forgotten or at least whitewashed by his current culture. It is a tale of ant colonies that once thrived on their own. The ants lived communal lives in harmony with one another and separate from the more materialistic roaches. Then one day, two roaches arrived at the colony. They could not speak the ant language but they made it clear that one, named Rashad, wished to remain and learn the ant language so he could serve as an interpreter between their two species and thus bring about better communication and harmony between them.
This sounds like it could be a nice story about differing cultures coming together, but Rashad actually wants to learn the ants’ language so he can learn their secrets and report back to his master, the roach Rainart, who is seeking to acquire the ants’ plastic—the mysterious human creation that has been fed to young ants and roaches for generations, allowing them to grow up to be intelligent and more highly evolved. Rainart’s own plastic mine has run dry, so he has planted Rashad into the ant colony with the intent to gain intelligence on how he can take over the colony. What results is a tale of conquering and submission like none we have read before.
While Henry reads forgotten documents and learns about the horrors of the past, he also comes to realize his own life may be in danger for what his research will reveal that the roaches wish to be kept hidden.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Inception of the Combined Colonies. A story of ants and roaches may not at first seem like everyone’s cup of tea, but I’ve always been fascinated by ants, ant farms, and the intricacies of ant holes and their hierarchy, so it was fun to imagine what their lives might be like. The novel reminded me of Richard Adams’ classic Watership Down about rabbit colonies, but I feel Frontiera has more fully imagined her fictional insect world. She includes a map in the book of the Combined Colonies of Insectia, she has created a calendar/timeline just for her characters, and she details what their daily lives are like in multiple ways, including how they have domesticated other unevolved insects to serve them.
Children will be caught up in the imaginative world Frontiera has created, but I think adults will enjoy it just as much and be able to draw parallels to our own world. The novel largely serves as a metaphor for the crimes humans commit against each other, including invading and conquering other countries, committing genocide, and then whitewashing the past. It’s a powerful story that reveals both the good and bad in insects/people, and the importance of everyone working together for their mutual benefit. It’s not a book likely to be forgotten; in fact, it will leave you wanting to read the first three books in the series and hoping that Frontiera will write more.

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