Contact with Chaos

Michael Z Williamson revisits the Freehold universe a generation later, when a Freehold ship makes first contact with an alien species. When I bought the book, I said "I'm not sure this is going to be as good as Freehold, but I'm going to buy it anyway, just to support Mike." In retrospect, I probably should have bought another copy of Freehold instead.
The planet in question is metal poor, and much of the book is taken up with the humans trying to avoid introducing metal and thereby disrupting the natives' societies. The Freehold government rep is the central character, but his reason for being there in the first place seemed a bit tenuous from a Freehold point of view, and his goals were vague. The climax depended too much on someone other than the main character, and the resolution wasn't satisfying. Basically, it felt like "Avoid introducing metal, avoid introducing metal, rein in other people who want to introduce metal, avoid introducing metal some more, okay, we can show them metal now." This is not to say that I didn't stay up to 1am reading it; I did. His vision of the natives' technology was interesting. But having recently re-read Freehold, I was expecting a stronger lead character and a stronger climax.