Jo Miles

Alien first contact tangles up with portal fantasy in this lush, adventurous tale, perfect for anyone who grew up dreaming of visiting Narnia or traveling to the stars. Lady Ada Quintrall, heir to her grandfather the Duke of Corbridge, wants nothing more than to see her family's new planet successfully terraformed, restoring their fortune and ensuring them a stable future. That means shutting away her whimsical side (including the beloved Chronicles of Yeneh, a children's portal fantasy written by her own ancestor)-and refusing the requests of Dr.
Zamora, the xenobiologist who is begging to study the planet's native life before it's driven extinct.  Ada's own encounters with the native life are vicious and unsettling. But when Zamora trespasses into an Infested Zone, Ada goes after him and discovers the astonishing truth: Not only does this planet have native sentient life, but those beings share a connection to her family that's older, deeper, and closer to her heart than she could have imagined.