Two of his other series are set in contemporary earth and he manages it. One is a pure sports romance ( Chasing Dreams - about a group of olympics hopefuls), the other is a Indiana Jones like story (Relic Hunter).
I’d imagine a ship romance would make it not that hard. And I imagine strict chain of command would add something to power issues. As I recall one talking point is having a mature aged woman in it. You don’t tend to see mature aged women in men’s romance, well unless they are ageless.
This is harem right. It looks mostly contemporary? I wonder how the author "justifies" the harem to the reader without the usual fantasy world culture stuff.
I can actually answer that I think now that I've listened to a bit of book 1. The setup is the characters are on a UN ship there to test some kind of new multidimensional drive, and there's navy personnel from many countries and dignitaries (mostly nuclear powers). The protagonist is an Aussie naval engineer, whose been tasked with looking after a group of naval personnel from these various countries who are all women (and being used to promote women in the navy). Going to guess the drive works but strands people in another dimension or time.
Makes me think of the film, The Final Countdown, that sends an aircraft carrier back in time to WW2 to stop Pearl Harbour.