A collection of the second batch of four volumes of the 'Kindred Spirits' series, covering a further 250-ish years of a future where the Human race has made intergalactic contact with eleven types of very different alien: the aggressive Agrosians, the pet-like Argibraffes, the bossy Belobrats, the erudite Camalosians, the friendly Clandusprods, the hungry Doosbury Giants, the scared Glabdihardits, the relaxed Habridats, the brusque Maggrumphs, the technology driven Mekkions and the spiritual Mrasianarts- and now there are space dinosaurs around too! In a universe this complicated how can peace ever be simple?
The stories include:
Abundance:
Space comes in fifty shades of black. Twelve aliens, six couples, six short stories and one dating service and one reality TV series both in desperate trouble.
Buster the Belobrat thinks he knows about true love so can’t understand why viewers are leaving his new reality TV show ‘Love Planet’ in droves. Nova, the head of the Human branch of the Intergalactic Dating agency, knows exactly where he’s been going wrong and sets out to teach him using six examples from her company’s history; six couples made up of the twelve species that exist in the known universe:
Obedience:Are we doomed to repeat our past? Or will Dotty find the reset button, despite being ‘only’ a pet?
Dotty the spotty pet argibraffe thinks she knows what the future holds: walking round the park, a bit of digging in the flower-beds, doing what she’s told (mostly) and living in the moment. However she has a secret obsession when her Human owners aren’t looking: the history broadcasts on the holovision. Dotty finds that she’s been enrolled as the first Argibraffe student at Clandusprod Community College under the dotty Mrasianart Professor Edulearn, that the park is on an alien world and the dig is on an abandoned planet full of mysterious remains. A combination of events involving a crazed Human tyrant, a talking crystal skull that only Dotty can hear and the attempted murder of her and her new friends means that soon Dotty isn’t just studying history but making it. Can someone who wasn’t allowed on the furniture a week ago really save the entire known universe? And just who are the cosmic dinosaurs?
Experience:
It is never too late for true love - even if takes a few centuries!
Moana was still a baby when the ITGang television show decided to use him in a series commemorating the first children born into an intergalactic world after the shock of interstellar contact, throwing him into a whirlwind of yearly television appearances meant to promote intergalactic brotherhood and friendship, with nine readymade pals to call his own. But, being a Maggrumph, Moana doesn’t make friends easily. Moana doesn’t think he’s anything special and maybe he isn’t, but that doesn’t mean his life is empty. He’s far from the grump everyone thinks he is: he’s a poet, a romantic, in something there’s not a lot of call for in a world of grumpy Maggrumphs and things . quickly change when he meets a Clandu-hybrid. Will he get the life he craves and find the fulfilment he always dreamed of, with the love of his life and their nine very different adopted children and pet argibraffe on a whole new planet, or will life just get in the way?
Maintenance:
Can Sparky the Mekkion face her fears, dry her deadly tears and re-programme her peers?
Sparky the Mekklion is happy with her job at the Universal, patching codes for the translation device that keeps the universe talking. But when her new Boss, an uncaring uncouth Doosbrat named Melon Rusk, starts using it to attack the new-oldcomers in the universe, the Space Dinosaurs, Sparky discovers her new calling and it’s one that lies in an unseen dimension of faith rather than her reliable logic. Will she ever find her life’s porpoise? (Not a typo!)
