Peripheral People, a Ylendrian Universe novel
Written by Reesa Herberth and Michelle Moore
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Plot: 4.5/5
Characters: 5/5
Writing: 3/5
This title is the most recent volume in a series of interconnected stand-alone science fiction books. Having this information negated most of my original protests about the plot development, which seemed forced and rushed with assumptions of knowledge about the world which the reader had no access to. Perhaps if I had read the previous books, I wouldn't have had this initial hurdle to overcome, so a simple word of warning: series, not the first book.
Peripheral People is set in a world of science fiction against a hard sci-fi backdrop of Imperial governance over a series of affiliated planets. Mostly, this rule appears to be accepted by the people of the various planets and the citizens of the Empire welcome the IEC agents who are the central focus of this particular book. Most of the characters appear to be human or at the very least humanoid, though details in this area are scant: I was startled to discover late in the book that the captain's race has triple-jointed digits, making him/her far more alien than the ability to switch between genders.
The main plot line centers around a pair of IEC inspectors, Corwin Menivie and Nika Santivan, and their psi-trained Agents, Westley Tavera and Gavin Hale. Corwin has a reputation for loathing psi agents and Westley is by nature and design an effusive and irritating personality. While they don't get along well on their small ship at first, a grudging respect and attraction grows between them against the backdrop of Nika and Gavin getting it on like gangbusters.
While the romance between the couples is part of the story, it is hardly the focus. The team is investigating a murder which West came across by accident in pursuit of an unrelated case. As they investigate this dangerous new murder, obviously psi-gifted and unstable, the team have to negotiate their personal lives in addition to addressing the rapidly multiplying bodies. While this story takes a bit to get off the ground, it quickly becomes the utterly consuming focus of both the team and the reader.
This book was slow to start for me. I struggled with shifting perspectives between characters and occasionally inconsistent modes of address: first names are informal, last names are professional, and sometimes they switch suddenly and I kept forgetting who belonged to which last name. As previously mentioned, there were details of setting and description which I felt were missing and made it hard to place what was going on and how things were supposed to progress. I suspect this is largely due to its placement as the most recent installment in a series and am actually really looking forward to locating and reading the rest of the series.
Once the story takes off, I couldn't put this down. Half-way through the book, it was a wild and bumpy ride, both with the characters' relationships and the unfolding mystery. Overall, this book was slightly predictable, but well worth the read, an excellent addition to an LGBT-friendly sci-fi collection.
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