The year is 2118, and five years before a mysterious portal opened near Titan, connecting humanity to an alien station outside the Milky Way. Earth is finally ready to forge a solid relationship with the aliens—or so hopes Philippe Trang, leader of the first diplomatic mission.
But things quickly spiral out of control. As Trang delves into the mysteries of the station and portals, his job, his life, and even his sanity are menaced by powerful forces he can barely comprehend!
This reminded me a little of a cross between Ryk Spoor’s Grand Central Arena series, writ small, without the Doc Smith-ian scale or superpowers, and James White’s Sector General series, without the medicine. There’s the same idea of a motley group of humans trying to understand lots of different alien perspectives, with more at stake than they originally knew.
Trang is a competent bureaucrat with a past, trying his best to ensure humanity survives. The aliens are interesting, and alien, and have conflicts of their own. The denouement suitably racks up the tension and consequences, and the solution is an interesting triumph of diplomacy over force.
I’m interested to see what Trang does next.
