Has anyone come across Karen Lord's The Best of All Possible Worlds?

[rfmcdpei]

I've gotten an advance copy of the new novel by Karen Lord, The Best of All Possible Worlds.

The novel isn't set in the Star Trek universe, but it's very close, a sort of mashup of Star Trek with Ursula K. Le Guin's Ekumen, one where the galaxy is home to multiple human subspecies of which the Terran is only one. One human population, the mentally advanced if emotionally repressed Sadiri, is devastated when an offshoot civilization (the Ainye) destroy the Sadiri homeworld, leaving the few Sadiri survivors to do their best to rebuild their civilization. Owing to an excess of males in the surviving Sadiri population, Sadiri have gone off to search for wives among other Sadiri offshoot populations and other humans. The action takes place on the populous and diverse planet of Cygnus Beta, where a mixed-race native woman comes into contact with a Sadiri survivor.

Yes, the similarities with the situation of the Vulcans and Romulans after Star Trek XI have been almost universally noted in the reviews I've come across to date, including in the io9 article which alerted me to the novel.

The book seen to be been marketed as a science fiction romance, not my sort of thing. A quick look at the first chapters does suggest to me that it's competently written, at least. I'll have more on it later, if people are interested.

[Una McCormack]

I downloaded this onto my Kindle last week but haven't started it yet. I'll be interested in your thoughts when you're done.

[publiusr]

Thanx for the heads up.

[rfmcdpei]

First impressions: It's a novel that could have been written for the Trek universe but isn't, and suffers because certain of the tropes of Trek don't really work outside of the Trek universe, the particular psychology of the Vulcans being most important in this regard.