2004 romance/SF/mystery; second of its series. Lydia Smith and Emmett
London are carrying on their relationship, but they both bave prickles
that the other can brush against. Oh, and someone has just tried to
kill Emmett's old friend…
Well, I wasn't wildly impressed with After Darkk, but this
sequel picks up the worldbuilding and runs with it. Things get a bit
infodumpy at times, but this planet has substantial history, which
this time ties directly into the present-day plot. (After all, the
main economic activity we hear about seems to be poking about ancient
alien ruins.)
And things just work better all round. Emmett's friend (and, secretly,
father) Mercer Wyatt is married to Tamara who used to be Emmett's
fiancée but dumped him when he stepped away from the political power
track; she and Lydia raise their hackles at each other, and they're
never going to be friends, but they don't concentrate on their
personal animosity to the exclusion of the important stuff. Emmett and
Lydia have their disagreements, but they manage to restrain themselves
from losing their tempers or assuming the worst and instead try to
talk through their problems. It's a much more adult relationship than
we saw in the first book, but it's still plausible for these
characters.
There is still a mystery, who tried to kill Wyatt, and that turns out
to be a relatively small part of a much bigger plot. And it's a plot
that makes sense: perhaps it wouldn't have succeeded, but its methods
and objectives are reasonable ones for the people involved.
We even get to find out what happened to Lydia in the events that
brought her to the start of the first book, and for that reason alone
I'd suggest carrying on with this one if you've read that and not
hated it; between them they make up a complete story. In an ideal
world some more of that story would have been shifted into the first
book, but this is not bad at all.