Vortex
No romance or no physical intimacy at all.
Closed door. No anatomical or crude language.
Estimated from the blurb · 0 reader votes
Tropes
None listed yet.
Content warnings
Blurb
The Eternal Emperor had returned at last from the dead, to pick up the pieces of his crumbling Empire. But even that great leader could not halt the Empire's decline alone. And so Sten, master spy, military strategist, and assassin, found himself appointed Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Altaic Cluster, where a brewing civil war threatened the stability of the Empire itself. Quelling a civil war was nothing new for Sten. But as one thing after another went wrong, he began to suspect that he was up against more than a mere local disturbance. Someone - operating in deepest cover, with the highest authority - was working behind the scenes to manipulate events and escalate disaster. And that someone wanted nothing more than to see Sten dead . . . For more information on this or any other Orbit book, visit the Orbit website at www.orbitbooks.co.uk
Read it? Rate it
The One (The Selection #3)
Also court intrigue and rebellion threatening a regime, but the stakes are romantic and personal rather than interstellar war, and far lighter on combat.
One Last Stop
Trades interstellar intrigue for a queer city romance, but keeps the puzzle-solving plot of an impossible situation; far lighter and much spicier.
Hollow
Keeps the murder, violence, and hidden-enemy-stalking-the-hero dread, but recasts it as a dark campus romance with heavy heat.
Night Music
Also about someone rebuilding after loss amid hostile forces, but domestic and emotional rather than interstellar intrigue, with a quiet romance instead of warfare.
Tourist Season
Both hinge on lethal operators and murder-soaked plotting, but this swaps interstellar politics for a spicy, comedic small-town romance with an explicit happy ending.
Slow Dance
Shares the slow unraveling of a long-ago bond and adult stakes, though the conflict is domestic and emotional rather than military.