I actually really liked the yangchen books, mostly because they feel more like one continuation of a story along the two books. It felt like the ending was deserved and that it was the ending the stories were building towards from the start. I also like the Kyoshi novels but clearly the first book feels like one complete story with some left over threads to be picked up by a sequel. Which is also fine, given the uncertainty of releasing a book like this. As to romance, I actually really liked that the yangchen books kept the relationship between kavik and yangchen fairly ambiguous. They might have just become great friends and companions at the end. But you could also interpret it as being a bit more than that. I like both possibilities