I found reading NOMAD to be like putting together a large jigsaw puzzle in which some of the pieces are missing. Bit by bit, I reasoned out that this was the second book in a series. I enjoyed the story-line at the end of the book and am glad I read the entire thing, but feel many younger reader would not do so if they hadn’t read the first book. Somehow, the book’s front cover did not lend itself to this discovery, though the praise on the back of the cover for AMBASSADOR should have. The cover art is intriguing for the genre and sci-fi reader.

Gabe Fuentes, it turns out, is an intergalactic ambassador to the planet Earth. The people of Earth do not recognize there even is such a thing because the embassies on Earth have gone to ruin. [ Here the missing puzzle piece may have implied the ancient embassy was an Aztec temple in Mexico. I do not know for sure.]  Gabe and the other ambassadors have special abilities that allow them to travel through a dream state of consciousness when and where their actual bodies are not able to travel. There are special translators which allow Gabe and other the ambassadors to see each other in human-form, even when the species do not naturally look that way. These translators, also, help with languages between the species. The translations aren’t always easy for Gabe to understand, like ” Our faces have grown wide for you.” (p. 178) which means, “She’s proud of us.”

Somewhere along the line [another missing puzzle piece] Gabe and the ambassadors have come across the Outlast who travel through space destroying all the species they come across. It is Gabe’s mission to stop this from happening to Earth which is in the Outlast’s direct path of flight.

Gabe makes it back to Earth, with  one ambassador (Nadia) helping from space, and another (Kaen) helping him on Earth.  They land in Mexico which is familiar to the other (non-Earthen) ambassador. They cross into the United States only to be caught and locked up in  an immigration detention facility in Arizona.  For Nadia’s part, she must explain to the Machinae “Why they  should care? I need to explain to an utterly alien consciousness why genocide is bad.” (p. 252) One Outlast makes it to Earth and finds Gabe, the rest are stopped by the Machinae’s decision to oppose genocide at the hands of the Outlast.