Boxmaster's Home 
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Boxmaster and Boxmaster's Disgrace  are straight action/adventure novels set in space.  Boxmaster's Home is not action/adventure and in fact bends and breaks most of the action/adventure genre rules.  

At the end of Boxmaster's Disgrace, Yran and Odirin appear to have vanquished the threat from the Pirates, and they have established a firm working respect for each other.  

Boxmaster's Home opens years later with the galaxy in the midst of an armed invasion from another galaxy.  

The invaders have taken Kethsem, and to gather the intelligence information necessary to stop the invasion, Yran and Odirin must retrieve their Boxes from station on Kethsem.  

They become trapped there for an entire winter while the war grinds to a slow crawl among the stars.  Yran saves Odirin's life by taking him to his birth family's house at the top of a mountain -- isolated -- to nurse him over his injuries from a fall.  Other members of the family that has ostracized Yran arrive.  They are staunchly opposed to galactic civilization and come very close to throwing Yran and Odirin out into the snow to freeze to death.  

Yran wins them over, one by one, frantically teaching Odirin not to offend.  

They must all huddle together during that long, harsh winter of ice and repeated bouts of 70 degree-below-freezing weather.  

Such deep, deep sub-freezing weather is not typical of that region or even of that mountain.  Clothing and travel equipment suited to that kind of freeze is not available.  Killer storms bombard the mountain, and the family can only struggle to survive in a house heated only by burning wood.

In the Spring, the family pulls together a ruse that will allow Yran and Odirin to escape the planet with their Boxes.  

The data they bring turns matters around, and the two cement their position as Legends by orchestrating a truce that turns into an actual treaty.  Peace is restored, but the Galaxy will never be the same again.  

You have a 5 chapter sample here of the 24 chapters of the novel.  The first major action/adventure rule break occurs at the end of Chapter 4 where there should be a battle scene, and there is not.  

Note the comment form link at the left, or you may comment by email.