My favourite part of most any Sci-Fi/Space novel is the "First Contact" with other life bit. (perhaps because I wish it would happen, but that's something else). You could write a whole book about this very event, and A.C. Crispin has.

I wasn't sharp enough to catch a date, but the time is sometime in the far future; Faster-Than-Light travel is a reality, although FTL communications aren't. There are 4 other human colonies on nearby stars, and it is from one of these that the young protagonist, Mahree Burroughs, is traveling. The vessel is a freighter named Desiree, headed towards earth when it encounters odd radio waves. After some searching, the source is found to be an inhabited planetary system, who's ships guide the Desiree to an orbiting space station.

The alien race is dubbed the Simiu by the crew, and as the two species meet, Mahree makes a friend of an also young Simiu named Dhurrrkk'. Unfortunately, things do not go nearly as well as could be desired, and through some undesirable actions, interstellar war threatens. Mahree and Dhurrrk' decide to right things, and set out on a rather perilous journey, having conscripted the Desiree's physician, Robert Gable, along the way.

The technology takes a backstage to the character interactions, which I think was admirable; devices are explained briefly in function and form, but anyone who is familiar with science fiction would be able to fill in the minor details. The alien physiologies were well described, and your mental image was of individuals of wide diversity and strangeness, yet of plausibility. You find yourself quite interested in Mahree's fate, and of the outcome of events.

This is the first of a series of at least 4 books, but I gather that they contain different characters, and are not tightly related. In any case, I can say that the first stands well on its own. I think A.C. Crispin is a fine author, and I look forward to reading her other books.