Skolian admiral who helped raise him. After being held captive and tortured for several days, Althor and Tina escape with the help of his sentient Jag fighter. In the end, Tina marries Althor, and together they discover the origin of Althor's ancestors, the Raylicans, who were a displaced group of Maya from Earth, relocated to the planet Raylicon during an earlier era by unknown aliens. Context Although Catch the Lightning is chronologically the last book in the series (to date), the novel was the second of Asaro's fourteen books published in The Saga of the Skolian Empire and is considered a stand-alone work. The events take place fifty years after the Radiance War, as described in The Radiant Seas. The book is known for breaking the expectation of young adult science fiction at the time, a genre which prior to that time primarily focused on young male protagonists. In showcasing instead a young female protagonist with a romantic story line, Catch the Lightning helped open the genre to a new audience of readers. Other examples of such novels include Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders series and the work of Lois McMaster Bujold. Asaro uses the two-part structure of the novel to explore the clash between different cultures, a theme inherent to the genre of planetary romance as done by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Marion Zimmer Bradley. The main character, Tina Pulivok, is a young woman of the Tzotzil Maya from the Zinacantan village of Nabenchauk on the Chiapas plateau in southern Mexico. Praised for the quality of her prose, Asaro builds the character's background in detail, including the use of scholarly texts and permission to include the translation of a Zincanteco poem from a Smithsonian treatise. Tina is already experiencing the culture shock of living in Los Angeles after growing up in the Chiapas Highlands, an idea further explored in "Ave de Paso,” a short story by Asaro which appeared in Fantasy: the Best of 2001. Althor is dealing with the clash between his universe and 1980s Los Angeles, which heightens the contrast between his and Tina's backgrounds, a conflict enhanced by his cybernetic differences from a normal human being. In the second half of the novel, when Tina travels to Althor's universe and time, the differences in their backgrounds become more pronounced, and the resolution of those differences within the context of the adventure forms a prominent