Expendable

9.00

Good scifi book with a concentration on plot & characters rather than science. It's a quick read with a great heroine - Festina Ramos - who has a very cool job:

"My calling in life was to land on hostile planets.
I made first contacts with alien cultures.
I went anyplace the Admiralty didn't know what the hell to expect.
Officially, I belonged to the Explorer Corps. Unofficially we Explorers called ourselves ECMs - short for Expendable Crew Members."