I think you'll like Expendable. It's kind of an inverted Star Trek, with a Federation of alien races (The League of Peoples) overseen by mysterious beings so advanced beyond us they may as well be deities. They have a main rule that you cannot knowingly take the life of another sentient being - if you do so and you subsequently travel beyond your solar system, you just die. (They don't care what you do in your own solar system - that's for each species to figure out. Just don't go spreading your murderous ways to other systems.) Therefore, there's a Federation-like organization but no interstellar war.
The "Expendables" are basically the Star Trek redshirts - the guys who beam down to a planet and you pretty much know aren't going to come back alive. Technically, they're the Explorer Corps, but they're made up of the "non-perfect people" - those born with deformities, mainly, because the Admiralty has figured out people get bummed out when good-looking people get slain on an away mission, but they generally find it easier to deal with when the person killed was on the ugly side. The main character is a human woman whose main distinguishing feature is a port wine colored birthmark on one cheek - that's all it took to get her drummed into the Explorer Corps.
Anyway, it's a good book, with an interesting background (one designed to be unlike most such science fiction stories with groups of allied alien races) and a very likable main character.
Johnathan
The "Expendables" are basically the Star Trek redshirts - the guys who beam down to a planet and you pretty much know aren't going to come back alive. Technically, they're the Explorer Corps, but they're made up of the "non-perfect people" - those born with deformities, mainly, because the Admiralty has figured out people get bummed out when good-looking people get slain on an away mission, but they generally find it easier to deal with when the person killed was on the ugly side. The main character is a human woman whose main distinguishing feature is a port wine colored birthmark on one cheek - that's all it took to get her drummed into the Explorer Corps.
Anyway, it's a good book, with an interesting background (one designed to be unlike most such science fiction stories with groups of allied alien races) and a very likable main character.
Johnathan
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