It took me a while to come up with a word to best describe this book, and I ended up with "Traditional". In many ways, this story could have been written any time from the 1930s to the present day. First, this is not a criticism it's an enjoyable, well written, tale, of exploring humans, both friendly and not so friendly aliens, and their interactions.
For me, an ageing retiree whose been reading Sci-fi for over 50 years there was nothing I hadn't encountered before. As I say not a bad thing but probably stopped it from getting a full five-star rating. Reading it was like enjoying a plate of comfort food like sausage and mash or roast beef, enjoyable but no raised eyebrows, or WTF moments.
While part of a series of three books so far it works as a stand-alone tale, although the introduction to the next book is cleverly done and a few seeds for future developments seem to have been sowed, and yes the second volume is already purchased.