Martin Sketchley's first novel is worth taking a look at to catch a promising new writer getting some stuff out of his system. By that I simply mean the setting is occasionally too familiar (militarised space, tyrannical humans and dignified aliens) or cliched (dystopic, divided, ruined planet, people living either in towering habitats or scavenging in the wastelands between). That's not to say that everything in The Affinity Trap has been done before, but Sketchley somehow seems to lack the will to mine the rich seams that he uncovers - or, hopefully, he's planning to tackle the sexual subtext of attraction and repulsion that drives this story at a later date.

The bookjacket's blurb provides most of the back-story as to the dysfunctional state of the world and our unbalanced relationship with several alien races, and we join Alexander Delgado, a loyal military intelligence officer past his prime, as he is ordered to undertake a special mission to bring Vourniass Lycern, a conosq female of the three-sexed Seriatt species, back into the arms of the Structure's despotic leader, General William Myson. Needless to say, things don't go according to plan, largely because of Delgado's own erratic (and erotic) impulses and the trail he leaves behind that ultimately brings the Structure military in hot pursuit.

The Affinity Trap has a promising start, and Sketchley certainly has some imagination when it comes to sex with aliens. Pit this against a backdrop of a far-right, arms-dealing Structure and you get the conflicting drives of creation and destruction all messing with the head of Delgado, who is on a rather wayward jag in his pursuit of the elusive Lycern, with his extremes of behaviour towards her in turns romantic and hostile. When resorting to his baser instincts Delgado occasionally compares admirably to Alfred Bester's Gully Foyle from The Stars My Destination, and like Foyle he is often a difficult man to pin down psychologically. One is never sure if the twists and turns that Delgado takes are his own doing or done under the influence of Lycern's grip on him at a pheromonal level - he is clearly a man simultaneously both whipped and horrified by his attraction to her. Sketchley only tentatively teases out the psychology of this dichotomy, hopefully leaving a fuller exploration until a later installment. All of which makes The Affinity Trap the kind of book that can't quite decide what it wants to be. After developing some good ideas Sketchley hints at a number of other promising directions the book could take, but half way through he seems to drop them all and instead go for the lower denominator, resorting to rather violent, action-driven set pieces all in the familiarly dystopic setting.

I wanted Sketchley to aim higher, and if he can flesh out the more aspirant and, lets be frank, sexier sides to the story then this could make for a promising series.