I've read this book twice by now, once two years ago and again this year for my queer bookclub since we we're looking for a trans sci-fi story.
I am very happy to have gotten around to rereading it. While I still remembered most of the plot twists, there were enough things I had forgotten to be charmed by them all over. And of course I really love Lem and Spock. Once of the biggest parts that changed for me in between my two reads is that I have consumed a lot of Star Trek since and so I could appreciate a lot of the reference in a new light and found myself even more excited by them than I did when I only knew that they were referencing something nerdy.
I really like the characters and how different they all are. Since most of the story takes place on a space ship and with a limited number of characters, I found that really important and really enjoyed the level of detail that went into each member of the crew. As the summary shows we see a lot of interesting and fascinating alien races and I really liked that.
The trans rep is wonderful and effortless (and lets be real: how often do we find transfem nonbinary characters that use she/her pronouns in media? Not very often) and I found the idea to only use she/her pronouns for every single alien interesting (which to me felt like a little nod to the left hand of darkness and I enjoyed that as well).
I also enjoyed the humor and the whimsyness of the story and I think if you are ready for a weird, funny space adventure with a sidedish of queer rep and talking dogs please check this book out!