Tina meets Althor late at night when she is returning home from work, and he is trying to figure out why he ended up on a planet that bears little resemblance to the Earth he expected.

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.

[4] 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.

[6] 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.

[7] 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.

[8] Other works listed as similar to Catch the Lighting are Nekropolis by Maureen F. McHugh, Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold, Master of Intrigue by Mary Ann Steele, Venus by Ben Bova and Heart of the Betrayed by Angela Verdenius.

The mystery of why a starfaring species moved humans to a dying world and then disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the wreckage of starships, is a central question of the saga.

The chapters set on Raylicon, which come late in the book, offer the most detail in the saga about the culture and history of world that originated both the Skolians and their enemies, the Eubian Concord, aka the Trader Empire.

Asaro's Nebula Award winning novella "The Spacetime Pool" further uses the ideas of Riemann sheets and branch points to structure the story.