Free (Kindle DRM-free) Dushau by Jacqueline Lichtenberg [SF Space Opera w/Romance]

[ATDrake]

Okay, this is a much more explicable freebie which I'm pretty sure is part of the KDP select exclusive-or-else-but-you-get-5-free-days-out-of-every-90 author program.

And yay for more backlist sf/fantasy!

Dushau, 1st in the eponymous "Dushau Trilogy" by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, a friend of Marion Zimmer Bradley's (see her own maybe-glitch freebie here) and an old-school Star Trek novel writer, is some sort of starfaring space opera/planetary romance with AI, and perhaps some emphasis on the "romance" part of "planetary romance", because the blurb mentions it got a Romantic Times Award.

Currently offered free without DRM, courtesy of the author herself, who's put the sequels in the Kindle Lending Library @ Amazon main, UK, DE, ES, FR, IT for who knows how long.

ETA: You can pick up a stack of her other backlist books really cheap at Fictionwise using this weekend's 55% off coupon.

Description
Readying her Galactic Exploration department for a routine debriefing of a Dushau planetary scouting team led by Prince Jindigar, the newly dubbed "Lady" Zavaronne finds that the new Emperor has jailed some of her Dushau as scapegoats for his political failures.

Assuming it's all a mistake, Zavaronne befriends the team's Artificial Intelligence, Arlai, and breaks the team survivors out of jail. But when the Emperor embargoes the Dushau homeworld, she must decide which side she's on before the Emperor destroys the whole galactic civilzation.

Lady Zavaronne's story continues in the sequel Farfetch, and Prince Jindigar's story in the third book, Outreach reveals the alien Dushau notions of reincarnation and karma.

This first novel of The Dushau Trilogy Mass Market pb was originally published by Questar, from Popular Library, a Warner Communications Company, where it won the first Romantic Times Award for a Science Fiction Romance.