Review: Interplanetary Intrigue and Interstellar Love!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 21, 2014
If you're a fan of Christine Pope's science fiction romance series (The Gaia Consortium), you've noticed that the various alien and human factions don't always play nice with others despite their official alliance.In the Mandala Maneuver, the author ratchets up the planetary intrigue by stranding Gaian ambassador Alexa Craig and Lirzhan, a diplomat from a race of honorable, empathic aliens called the Zhore, on a seemingly idyllic planet that's home to deadly predators and even deadlier secrets. For Alexa, known as "the Ice Queen" among her colleagues and Lirzhan, whose people are notoriously private--so private at they do not even show themselves to outsiders, but cover themselves completely with hoods and gloves, leaving others to wonder what they really look like, their shared ordeal leads to a surprising series of discoveries. Suffice it to say before the book is over Alexa gets a look under Lirzhan's hood and she is NOT disappointed. (Pope has a real knack for creating intriguingly sexy aliens.)The Zhore were first introduced in Pope's novella, "Breath of Life," and each time they appear, the author has given them more detail, filling in their history, their culture, and their mores in a way that suggests a wider mythology is at work. Her universe is populated with strong and passionate characters who move about their worlds in believable and entertaining ways. (In the Gaian Consortium, women do a lot more than open hailing frequencies.)This book is a lot of fun because along with the expected romance, Pope also delivers a complex conspiracy that threatens not just the protagonists, but everyone on both their worlds.