I've just finished David Brin's Uplift scifi saga. The basic theme is that Earth has found alien races in the galaxy and soon find that humanity's story is a bit atypical. In Brin's universe there is a galactic tradition of Uplift, that is the process of an alien sentient race bringing other non-spient races to sapiency usually using gene-meddling techniques. Each race has a patron race that uplifted them and they themselves have patrons all the way to the original sapient race. Earth doesn't fit in this scheme and found its way to sapiency in the purest Darwinist form, through evolution. In this context, a particular race gains power by uplifting other races and through the standing of their own patrons. There a lot more to it but this is the central concept.
The series relates stories in this universe involving humans, uplifted dolphins and chimpazees going against some other alien races and helped by a few others.
It has a kind of an old-school scifi ring to it, a bit like the anticipation novels of old. It features lots of classic sci fi themes like FTL (Faster Than Light) travel, anti-gravity fields, strange alien races and so on. One other good point I found was that there is no real "bad guys" to beat although there a friends, allies, and of course ennemies. But the plot is not about kicking the ass of some ugly monsters.
I liked every bit of it and read the whole of it as fast as I could. The only gripe I have with this series is that there's a lot of loose ends. I would have liked a follow-up on this but it's been a great read anyway. The second book in the series got a Nebula, Hugo and Locus award, the third one got the Hugo and Locas, which usually means these are VERY good books.
I'm now reading David Brin's Kiln People, another popular novel by this author that explores an interesting concept. But I'll talk about that later.