2009 romance/SF/mystery; sixth of its series but effectively
stand-alone. Lyra Dore found a trove of a rare sort of amber, and the
Company took it off her. And she was seeing Cruz Sweetwater, the
Company's security chief, at the time. Three months later, he comes
back into her life…
OK, it seems that there's basically an infinite variety of
"amber" now. (To be fair, this is the human term for the material the
weird psi-reactive alien relics are made of.) Obsidian amber? Amethyst
amber? Why not? Also more specialised psychic powers for interacting
with it, kept hidden because they're weird unlike the "normal" psychic
powers that everyone knows about. (Sadly plausible.)
But also some people have the ability to sense their Destined True
Love through psychic power, and, well, Jennifer Estep will do a much
better job of that in fifteen years' time in the Galactic Bonds
series. (E.g. what happens when you and your Destined Partner are
already happily in love with other people?) The version we get here is
a very traditional romance-writer view of it: yeah you two are going
to be together (he knows it even if she doesn't) so if you don't like
each other now, if you've each given each other genuine cause for
offence, just wait and have some awesome sex and everything will be
fine. (And never mind that your granddaddy screwed her granddaddy out
of the mine that made your family fortune.)
So I don't really enthuse over our lead couple, and there's a fair bit
of family history that's clearly teaser material for the same author's
Arcane Society series (as by Amanda Quick, romance and psychic
powers in Victorian England). Meanwhile there are people trying to get
their hands on items from the trove, and someone is being weird and
stalkery to Lyra. Since there was only ever one candidate for the
latter, and the former is similarly fairly obvious, I felt in the end
as though I'd eaten a sandwich with all garnish and no filling.
There are enjoyable moments; the action is solid, and the people
managed to be convincing at least while I was reading. But I won't
remember much about this book when I get round to the next one.