The Quiet Invasion by Sarah Zettel
Read in August 2010
Great first contact story. Zettel’s vision of Earth’s political evolution and expansion to several colonies on nearby planets and satellites painted a grim future for civil rights and personal liberties. My only small quibble with the aliens stems from their mental motivations, which seemed similar to human beings. Besides that, I couldn’t put the book down, especially that last hundred pages or so (which I need to re-read to make sure I didn’t inadvertently skip something in my mad dash to the finish).
Update May 2013: I met Sarah recently at a convention book fair and she assured me the ebook for Quiet Invasion would be released very soon. Her Isvalta series was recently released to ebook as well.
Aliens are hard to write. At least they are for me. As humans we can imagine, to the best our human ability, how an alien might behave, but if we push the bar and make the alien too alien readers will have a hard time relating to the alien character.