First contact. But the aliens just want us for a trade partner. And they've selected for our one contact, a washed up drunk.

This is a hard book to review. It started out with a good voice and an interesting premise. 4 star or better territory. But then it trod along slowly and mostly uneventfully for awhile. And then it suddenly went somewhere very fast, probably too far, and then just ended. The ending wants me to give it 2 stars or less, but I'll let the strong voice and interesting premise balance it out to 3 stars.

This is the only full length book that T.L. Sherred wrote. Sadly, he had a stroke and stopped writing very soon after this book was published. There is a sequel to this however, written in collaboration with his friend and fellow author Lloyd Biggle Jr. called Alien Main. ... I'm not sure where it's going to go though after the rather abrupt and final end to this book. ( )