It’s not often that every book in a series is good enough to deserve a DIK rating, but Jenn Burke and Kelly Jensen are four for four with Inversion Point, the fourth novel in their consistently creative and compelling Chaos Station sci-fi romance series.

Note: This is a same-couple series with overarching plot elements so it needs to be read in order; new readers should start at the beginning with Chaos Station. There will be spoilers for the earlier books in this review.

This story takes place around six months after Skip Trace, and things seem to have finally settled down a bit for Zed, Felix and the Chaos crew. They’re mostly back to their regularly scheduled jobs – ferrying cargo across the galaxy and tracking down missing persons; Felix is getting the help he needs with his PTSD and learning to control his anger, and Zed hasn’t had any contact with the Guardians since they alerted him to the existence of a fourth intergalactic species and told him to “be ready.” If only a bonkers religious cult hadn’t latched on to him as some kind of second coming, life would be pretty good.

But Zed suddenly has more to worry about than a bunch of crazy stalkers when he’s contacted by the Guardians for the first time in six months and told they want him at the Hub. (This serves as the nominal centre of the galaxy, and each of the three races – human, ashushk and stin – has a station there, together with a gateway to their home world.) Six months earlier, a fourth gate was activated, but there has been no sign so far of whoever activated it. Now, reports are coming in that a stin probe sent into Species Four space has been destroyed – and in response, no fewer than thirteen stin warships have passed through their gate and into the Hub. Zed just hopes the Guardians aren’t expecting him to stop a war.

As their emissary and the only one able to communicate with the newcomers, Zed quickly finds himself at the centre of events and being pulled in all directions as he tries to meet the constant flow of demands made on him from all sides. With the eagle eyes of a watchful media upon him as well, the pressure on him is huge and he barely has time to eat or sleep, let alone spend any time with Felix to draw on his love and support. Felix gets it, but is quietly worried that this could be his life now, pacing in an empty suite while Zed negotiates intergalactic treaties and trade deals. He’s irritated because nobody else seems to realise the amount of stress Zed is under, and frustrated because he doesn’t know how to help. And he has demons of his own to deal with – literally – when the stin who tortured him while he was a PoW appears alongside the stin ambassador, clearly determined to unbalance both Felix and the human delegation.

At the top of the list of everything Zed doesn’t have time for is being jealous of Theo Paredes, the Ambassador for the Central Alliance of Stations and Planets – who happens to be the only other person with whom Felix has ever had a serious relationship. The fact that Theo is a genuinely decent man – charming, funny and competent – makes it hard for Zed to dislike him, no matter how much he might want to, but jealousy is hard to combat, especially when Zed’s whole existence has been taken over by the need to foster diplomatic relations between the newly-named resonance (Species Four) and the other races, and the little matter of trying to prevent a human-stin war. Zed and Felix love each other deeply, but they never seem to get a break, and in Zed’s state of utter exhaustion, insecurity starts to bite. He can’t help but remember that Theo is fully human whereas he, Zed, is some kind of mutant now, thanks to all the alien bits and pieces implanted into him, and he starts questioning his suitability as a partner for Felix, thinking that he would have had an easier life with Theo – and perhaps a happier one, too.

Inversion Point is another inventive, fast-paced read; a wonderful combination of relationship drama, political shenanigans and action in which the authors do an amazing job of creating a sense of anticipation and foreboding as they ratchet up the tension to fever pitch. With the stakes as high as they could possibly be, our heroes are forced to make some awful and unenviable choices in order to prevent all-out war and my heart broke for them more than once as Felix pays a terrible personal price and Zed is pushed almost beyond breaking point.

But after all the trials and tribulations, the authors gift us with a lovely pay-off that just further cements how far Zed and Felix have come and how solid they are as a couple – and in which they finally, finally realise what we’ve known all along: that they absolutely, positively belong together.

“It was simple—without Felix Ingesson there was no Zander Anatolius.”

The world-building in this series is stellar and continues to impress. The authors have created alien races, planets, and societies, and seamlessly woven in histories, backstories, and memories that make the characters and their experiences feel that much more authentic. I loved the resonance – they’re presented as almost puppy-ish in their eagerness to get to know their new ‘neigbours’, and their designation of Felix as the “fluffy yellow partner unit” is priceless.

Once again, one of the short stories from the Always and Forever collection is included in this new edition, this time an Interview with Allspace Alliance News that Zed and Felix give a couple of months after the events of Skip Trace. Felix has to be on his best behaviour – especially as most of his interactions with the media have ended up as brawls.

Tense, exciting, and wonderfully absorbing, Inversion Point is possibly the best book in the Chaos Station series so far, and I can’t do otherwise than highly recommend both it and the entire series.