I have received an advanced review copy via BookSirens and voluntarily provide my honest opinion. Thank you!
3 stars - entertaining read with some weaknesses
This is the first part in a series about the crew on an exploration mission gone wrong. After being attacked by an unknown alien race Captain Perez and her small crew of humans, Chtithiids (aliens living with humans on earth) and AIs are sent on a mission to find their attacker - they expect to be away from home for many years and have no way of knowing what adventures await them. Unfortunately, even their first warp jump goes very wrong, the AI steering the ship has inexplicable issues with memory loss and they have no idea where they have ended up. This is the beginning of all sorts of adventures and shenanigans...
This first part is clearly meant to set up the story: we get to know the crew and its mission and their first adventures bring former strangers together as a team and also manage to find them a cute mascot. The interaction between the crew members is fun to read, it is mostly lighthearted banter and they treat each other with respect. With a premise of a plot centered around exploring the galaxy this is Sci-Fi of the Star Trek kind, and the whole narration is so lighthearted that you kind of know that things will always end well, so I would consider this to be cozy Sci-Fi.
So, while the premise is very much up my alley and I really wanted to love this, some aspects detracted from the fun for me. The events and the plot in general are all rather disjointed and arbitrary. Things just happen and then they are over again. The reasons for and implications of events are barely being explored and I was just hoping for a bit more complexity overall. There's also plenty of tropes being thrown at you with a total lack of irony (like the cute, pink, furry critter with large eyes that comes on board as a stowaway and whose sole purpose is to become the mascot).
Towards the end of the book the crew decides to make first contact with a species that is techologically still in the stone age. And in this world there seems to be zero sensitivity about the impact of seeing spaceships coming from the sky for such a culture. But in this case it's okay I guess, because the aliens look really ugly and mean. (I mean, seriously?) So our crew barges in from the sky, loaded with weapons just to stir up some shit ... and then manages to be totally outwitted by the stone-age aliens.
This whole supblot was just so dumb, pointless and annoying that it managed to seal the deal: I won't continue with this series. It's light, it's entertaining - but there's just not enough substance there for my personal taste. Your mileage may vary.