Books like Uplift: The Complete Original Trilogy

The trilogy is excellent. The three books can be read separately, what ties them together is the world and there's a slight cause and effect between the second and the third book.The setting is in the future, where mankind has made contact with sentient alien life, and found itself in an awkward position. Intelligent alien life has existed for billions of years (even before the solar system was formed), and sentience has a way of "Uplifting" new sentience. So, every known intelligent species in the galaxy is known to have a "patron" species, ie. the species that brought the "client" from a primitive form into a sentience and intelligence. Humanity, however, doesn't have a known patron species, and it is believed that either humanity has "grown" intelligence through evolution, or that it's patron has abandoned it before completing its Uplift. Humans are then a "wolfing" species, and has no prestige and would be expected to die out soon. Except that, when the humans first make contact, they are already in the process of "Uplifting" chimpanzees and dolphins, and this wins them great prestige among many alien species. Humanity now has to face galactic politics (some proud species don't accept humanity among them) as well as learn as much as it can from the billions of years of knowledge accumulated by the aliens in the "library".The first book (Sundiver) is arguably the worst, but for me it is still placed high among the books I've read. It's a short mystery that occurs IIRC 200 years before the other books. As a mystery book, I didn't feel it innovative or particularly groundbreaking, but I considered it interesting and fun. The science fiction scenario is what I liked most, and it really prepares the reader for the following two books. As for the characters in the book, I found that they could have been better fleshed out, but it's not something that hurts the story.The second book (Startide Rising) is the best (and winner of the Nebula Award). The premise is that the first space ship commanded by dolphins finds something strange that's not documented in the galactic library, and that has potential to be relevant to ancient galactic religions. This causes some fanatic alien species to chase the space ship, which ends up hit and flees to an ocean planet in which they can hide and repair their ship. War rages in space around the planet, while the dolphin crew, it's chimpanzee scientist and helper humans do what they can to try to survive, discover the secrets of the planet, fix their ship, deal with an internal rebellion, and devise a plan to escape so that they can report their findings to Earth. The story is awesome, and the characters are fun. For me what was most impressive was that it seemed extremely fast-paced, but not rushing anything.The third book (The Uplift War) is very good, but I have a feeling it fell short of what it intended. It is an epic, being the largest book and with the most complicated arcs (there is one arc that extends almost the whole book that was a prank set up by one of the aliens). It is fun, and it touches a lot of important topics. I would give it a four and a half stars if I could.What I would recommend, for anyone that's interested, is to read them in order if you like science fiction and is interested in the saga. Otherwise, start with Startide Rising, knowing that it's the best book. If you really enjoy it, read Sundiver, but lower your expectations. Sundiver is short, and it will help you have an idea if you want to embark in the journey of reading The Uplift War. The final book is almost as good as Startide Rising but longer and more complex, and a lot better than Sundiver.