I think I liked this book. It was interesting and manages to cover every sci-fi trope (you want aliens? colony ship? first contact? terraforming? got it). 
 I'm going to listen to the sequel as well. Just a few negative points to make. 
 Bob is a white man, and apparently every time he reproduces it also makes white men. So you have an entire book of a white man talking to himself. There are no women, sure some side character might have one line, but no female characters. All of the human leaders that Bob interacts with are white men (halfway through the second book, and this still holds). Bob manages to comment on the bodies of the women he talks with, even though he's... you know, bodyless. 
 My next issue is how the alien ecology is treated, that and meat. Just to say that using a space station to "hand-wave" force grow cows? Is not gonna happen. Also, what about Mars?