2024 fantasy, linked to the Uncertain Sanctuary series. Raisa is a
lawyer who gets tapped as the advocate for a newly-discovered alien
species. By the time she gets to the world, one of them has been killed…
All right, there is a certain amount of "Demon in the Dark" here,
with the miners versus the weird-looking alien species. But it's also
very much tied into the worldbuilding of the series as a whole, the
various sapient species and their historical enmities, and the way
factions can use an incident to promote their preferred way of
thinking.
Also, I didn't get the feeling of slightly off use of language that
I have before with Schwartz. And, like Any House in a Storm,, this
story is essentially complete in itself, while slightly developing the
larger setting; while I wouldn't recommend that someone start here, it
does at least come to a conclusion rather than ending on a cliffhanger
as Schwartz's longer series have tended to do.
There is a certain amount of murder mystery here, not to mention a
romance very much on the standard Schwartz pattern, but what it's
primarily about is working out the right thing to do, then doing it.
And I rather enjoyed it.