I'm never really that bothered by that, as long as the story is set during the series you know it can't make any major changes. I just want an entertaining story, I don't need it to make lasting changes to the story. As for the complaint about this one using a potential way home as part of the story, I don't really see it as a problem. Even if you know they won't make it home or take a huge amount of time of the journey, it still works as a motivation for the characters to get involved in whatever is going on.
Yeah, I don't mind the issue of it using a potential way home as a story point, and you knowing it can't possibly happen - often part of the adventure is finding out why it won't. And actually in this one, it was a relatively small element of the overall plot, so I didn't mind. Picked this one up cheap at my local second-hand bookshop, and surprised myself by how much I enjoyed it. The plot is full of holes, and the characters don't sound like themselves in many cases (was it written before the show broadcast?), but I found the plot galloped along in a diverting enough way. It was quite inventive and different, things happened quickly, and the writing style was an easy enough read (unlike some Trek novels where the writing style makes it feel like wading through treacle). It did amuse me though with all the references to 'oh no what if there's a Cardassian spy??' without any mention of Seska. I assume it's meant to be set before State of Flux, but it did stick out somewhat.
I don't know about the writing, but yeah, I think at this point they were still in the "pitched and approved before the series even aired" phase of VOY novels.
I think what bothered me a bit in the early Voyager books is that plot point was used several times in several books. By the time I read this novel I was like 'again with the dangling fruit?' It didn't help that I didn't care for this novel either. If I enjoyed the book then it'd make it easier to overlook what I thought were it's weaknesses. I mean, I guess that goes for any book. And it didn't help that one of the characters the author created for the novel was totally unlikeable IMO. I still have a few numbered Voyager books to read. But of the numbered novels for the various series I found Voyagers numbered novels to be the weakest so far. We'll see if that changes when I read the others.
It's mainly just little things that stick out. Like Chakotay constantly called Torres 'Ms Torres' and Kes calls Chakotay 'Mr Chakotay' rather than Commander like she generally would in the show.