Chapter 1 (after the Prologue that is available on Amazon) starts in 2692 in the Outer Rims, it is already dealing with the aftermath of a Yautja hunt. A Marine named Johnny Mains is observing a dead Yautja, the place was attacked by two Predators who killed two Marines before being killed.
Now before anyone feels that Yautja are being nerfed, do note that the Marines are using laser rifles, yes, laser, not plasma. Laser travels at the speed of light and I doubt even Yautja can dodge that. Two shots from the laser rifle completely severed the Predator's hand from his wrist and damaged his wrist computer which left the corpse flickering in and out of visibility as the cloaking glitched.
The VoidLarks are monitoring a "Yautja habitat" (which are huge artificial vessels orbiting stars, probably large motherships that are being stationary) and the two Yautja that attacked them didn't come from this mothership.
One thing I noted that made the four attackers (another pair of Yautja attacked somewhere else) similar to Perry's Yautja is the fact that they can be assholes during the hunt. A Marine gave her life protecting a man and his two children from one of the Predators. The book says that during the heat of the hunt, a Predator can get a bit too carried away and kill everything quickly and efficiently while other individuals can get a bit more sadistic and barbaric.
Already in chapter one, a Marine was trophied.
Chapter two takes place on LV-1529, which is being terraformed by Weyland-Yutani but is also the best place for research on Yautja as it's in the outer rims. The scientist lady (I'll leave her name for you guys to find out) is obsessed and fascinated with all things Predator, she could barely hold her excitement in when two of the Yautja bodies from chapter one are brought to her.
However, she is genuinely fascinated, not in a "mad scientist" way. She wants to actually communicate and understand these enigmatic creatures, yes, enigmatic. Yautja are described as elusive loners and the woman speculates that they only gather into large groups for social rituals or ceremonies and even for mating purposes, but that's her speculation. Despite knowing a bit of their language, humans still know squat all about the Predators. Speaking of language, the main Marine's ship computer (called "Frodo") mentions how its trying tot translate the Yautja signal but the dialect is so different that it can only guess it's a countdown, when asked how it knows, Frodo says "it's just a hunch".
The thing I liked is how terrified the humans in chapter one were, and rightfully so. Despite our advancements, the Yautja are still the boogiemen of space. While we "Monitor" their communications (which are very brief), the further we expand into space, the more they tend to notice us.
I personally think that Lebbon is treating the Yautja with a level of respect. He is not going over the top, he is treating it realistically and sensibly. So there's no instances of them doing ridiculous things like Hish are said to do.
However, one thing that is mentioned in the book is that when Yautja attack large population centres, they take captives, but for what purposes, we do not know. I suspect they might experiment on the captives. I am too early in the book to know, it might be told later on.
One of the Weyland-Yutani Thirteen executives contacts the scientist woman who is obsessed with Yautja and speaks to her about the bodies that she's been given to experiment on. He tells her to "think about" a scenario where the Predators truly attack us, and she said that "they're not like that, their society is not structured in such a way" and how there is a "honesty" to them that isn't presented in us humans to which the executive says that same honesty got a lot of people killed.
Also, one Colonial Marine who is a self proposed Yautja expert who has been fascinated ever since she was a kid (why are all the ladies fascinated with Yautja?
) says that she joined the Marines because she was inspired by the Predator martial culture.
Another scientist woman is obsessed with historical encounters with Predators, she's the one who confirms that a Predator hunted in Stalingrad in 1943.
