So. Yume Kitasei's "The Stardust Grail". It's very very good! For some reason I find it hard to explain why, but I'll try.
The world isn't that original: humanity has made first contact and settled on some alien worlds connected to a FTL transport mode network. Some aliens are mysterious, some are helpful, some are warlike. There are mercenaries and a navy and catastrophic failure of some nodes.
(1/n)
The viewpoint we get to investigate this world feels very new and fresh though: it's the point if view of archaeologists and historians, of people studying artifacts, one of them the titular "Stardust Grail" not all agree is a real object. Maya is such an academic, and we meet her as a very realistic stressed first generation grad student writing a paper on a deadline.
(2/n)
But Maya is more than that: she used to be a thief, one with an agenda: freeing artifacts from museums (yes, of course there are alien artifact collections!) and giving them back to their rightful owners.
When she and her old associate Auncle get a lead on the Grail, the novel switches to heist mode as they assemble a team and plan, skirmish with the military, have things go sideways - until they realize they have yet more spoilery things to do.
(3/n)
It's fun, it's fast-paced, and it takes time to explore Maya's moral choices, and themes of friendship, loving academia as an outsider, and historical research.
Like the setting, the characters add fun twists to the stocks they could be. Mercenary Wil's size, power armor, and conflicted loyalty remind me of The Expanse's Bobby, but her disabilities are a new take. Medical robot Medix owes a lot to both the EMH and Data, but explores humanity in a unique way.
(4/n)
Maya's moral stances are strong like Holden's in The Expanse", but she's not a privileged white boy, and that adds a lot of depth. And the aquatic aliens are their own thing, really.
There are no romantic subplots here; it's friendships holding it together and carrying it. I like that very much as well.
(And she writes that paper in the end.)
(I like that very much, too.)
(5/n, n=5)
Jules