Skeen's Leap

This fast-paced, gritty space adventure introduces the unforgettable Skeen, a hard-edged heroine and intergalactic thief trapped in an unknown universe.   Jo Clayton, creator of the popular Diadem Saga, introduces a delightfully unforgettable new character-a tough, sexy, futuristic tomb raider Lara Croft with issues-and sets her loose in a wild and woolly galaxy of dastardly villains, alien shape-shifters, and all manner of strange sentient life-forms.   Skeen is a bandit and a rogue, a master thief wanted throughout myriad solar systems for plundering the rare antiquities of countless alien civilizations while always keeping one rocket ship–length ahead of the intergalactic law. A "rooner" with a dark past, she now finds herself penniless and abandoned on a miserable backwater planet, at the tail end of a string of very bad luck, with no option except to follow unreliable rumors to a supposed fortune in gems hidden among ancient ruins. What she finds instead is a gateway into another world-and a universe of trouble.   Now, trapped in a strange new reality with no way out, Skeen must find the key to reopening the portal, and that will entail making contact with the mysterious aliens who created the interdimensional passageway. But the enigmatic Ykx vanished eons ago, and finding representatives of a highly advanced and possibly extinct extraterrestrial race is not going to be easy for the silver-tongued lone wolf outlaw. It doesn't help that Skeen's entourage keeps expanding by leaps and bounds with unwanted hangers-on whose interference could end up damning her to an eternity in nowhere.   The first book in a thrilling trilogy featuring the inimitable Skeen, Skeen's Leap cements Clayton's well-deserved reputation as one of the premier purveyors of science fantasy, alongside Andre Norton, C. J. Cherryh, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Wry, witty, and wondrously inventive, featuring a colorful cast of delightful and deliciously weird alien types, it is a space opera romp guaranteed to transport genre aficionados to new and wondrous worlds.