Cherished Invader by Samantha Gail is a futuristic story set on other planets.

Leah Barrentin is a Senior Forestal.  An agent for the United Sentients.  Psychically gifted with special powers she and the other agents are sent on missions at the directon of Ian van der Jhome.

Her latest mission is unusual when she finds herself working with Sekrys'dalahr, another Senior Forestal.  Normally only one Senior Forestal would be on a mission, but in this case it requires the both of them.

Travelling to the Planet Aransis they are sent to stop a war. 

Blending into the community they are soon well known around the area, although no one knows where they have come from.  The planet they have been sent to is not one that knows of the other worlds and has not mastered space flight as they have done.

Leah turns to the libraries to try to find out what the war is about and to find a way to stop it before the world is destroyed.

They have not been on the planet long when Leah finds her mission includes breaking a young man out of prison.  In doing so she also releases two other men, Garth Treece and Brean Mitchell.  She does not know that the way in which she released them draws far more attention to herself than she had planned  Garth and Brean are soon shadowing Leah and Sekrys'dalahr's every move - at least they do when they can keep up with them.

Garth is a man who is unusual on Aransis, he has his own psychic powers and has kept them hidden.  Only Brean, with his own secrets knows about them.

Following Leah and Sekrys'dalahr they soon realise that there is something very unusual about the two women.  But unusual or not it is only by combining their two teams will they be able to stop the war.

This novel is very good in certain ways but a little disappointing in others.  The idea for the story and the main characters are all very good.  The characters are engaging and the story original.  There is a lot of humour in the novel but also a serious message.

However there are a lot of secondary characters in the book who I felt deserved more page time or less.  The story of Payton and Vladamir was given quite a bit of page time.  I felt that it could have done with more, or alternatively less in this book and a book of their own.  I felt that they were not given enough time to develop into characters I could care about although I do think that they could have done if they had been given the chance.  Likewise with Katice, Ian and his wife.  There was just enough said about them to make the reader curious about them but not enough to satisfy the curiosity.

In the end the secondary characters seemed merely to distract from the story of the two main couples, Leah and Garth and Sekrys'dalahr and Brean.

That being said there were still a lot of good points about this novel, the vivid descriptions of the worlds they are on and the intricacy of the different communities was well thought out.

Worth reading but when I re-read it I am pretty sure I will be skipping the secondary character scenes.

RATING : 
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Also by Samantha Gail: Savior In Time

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