Gateway

Read the Spanish version of this book directly on my phone while commuting everyday during the final months of that 2018 Hong Kong summer. During this time was when I thought about tracking all the books and get an E-reader. I remember this and A Fire Upon The Deep quite fondly because of the memories of those days.

The book has an obvious old school SciFi tone where things happen very quickly and the big idea, in this case the first contact with alien artifacts, obfuscates partially the characters development. In this case though, they were interesting enough to maintain the plot's consistency.

Everything revolves about some left behind devices by an alien race and how humans are trying to make sense of them. The main artifacts being a few startships that gets you anywhere and/or everywhere. Eventually they humans go on missions with this ships and get money when they come back. The most interesting part is what actually happens during these trips.

There is a major violent event between the main characters that may put some people off. Like some other classics, this did not have any major impact back then.