Balance of Trade by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

This actual began as part of my Liaden reread, but since I had never read it before - and it is a full length stand-alone, I thought it deserved its own note. Unlike Ghost Ship, it did stand alone, and stood quite well. After Ghost Ship, I swore not to fall prey to their obvious "OMG what happens next" strategy and not read any more of them. At least not to buy any more of them, but this was included in a volume with the Crystal stories and I didn't realize it until I got there. I suppose that packaging means that the setting is somewhere between Crystal Dragon and Local Custom, which is an interval of a thousand years (standards) or so.

Jethri Gobelyn is a member of a Terran trading ship family. When the ship is grounded for a refit, his captain (and mother) sees it as an opportunity to get him off the ship. The story is well along before we find out why she wants him off the ship. She has found a berth for him on a cousin ship - but through a chain of events Jethri finds himself on a Liaden ship apprenticed to a Liaden Master Trader.

Jethri is an appealing hero, and the story does hang together quite well. Parallel to the story of Jethri's adventures as he overcomes the bias of Liadens against Terrans, there is another line that ties back to the old universe and its dangerous technology. This gives the story enough depth to sustain itself for the full distance.