The Quiet Invasion

Rating:
Summary: A good book, but not more than that.
Review: Dr. Helen Failia is the founder of Venera, an orbital city designed to provide a research base for investigating Venus. But, things are going sour, and it seems that Venera will not be around for long. Ambassador T'sha is a leader of an alien people whose world is dying. They need a new home, and have found one...Venus. This is a story of misunderstanding between people, and the quest for understanding by some and for results by others.

This book should have been a great book, but for some reason it is not. The author simply introduces the aliens, but does not describe them; I found myself constantly trying to understand what they even looked like. The story dragged on, while the storyline took turn after turn. I think that this book would have benefited from being simplified and shortened.

Overall I do think this was a good book, but not more than that. I don't recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A novel idea
Review: Dr. Helen Failia refuses to accept that her dream of a permanent colony on Venus seems doomed especially after the difficult but successful establishment of Venera. Though human descendants now have been born in the orbiting city, most earthlings believe humanizing the greenhouse planet is futile because it is too costly to conquer the ultra-hostile environment. Helen's few allies have their own "Outer Space" agendas that do not necessarily support Venera, but desperation causes an unsteady alliance. All this group needs is a miracle.

The impossible occurs when a planetary probe finds evidence that life once existed on Venus. Not long afterward, aliens make first contact with the earthlings. These aviarian people see Venus as "Eden" in light of their home planet nearing death. However, now the majority of Planet Earth refuses to cede Venus to these foreigners even if the planet cannot sustain the human life form. With no other option for the People and with the sudden obstinate decisions of the humans, war seems eminent.

THE QUIET INVASION is a powerful science fiction tale that breathes fresh life into the first contact story line. The plot is engrossing because the key human players seem real with their personal agendas. Their reactions to the realistic plight of the People make for a fabulous novel and in turn the aliens cannot grasp human need to possess something that is so unnecessary for survival. Sarah Zettel has written a must read for science fiction fans who like this author will scramble to obtain her previous books like RECLAMATION and PLAYING GOD.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A novel idea
Review: Dr. Helen Failia refuses to accept that her dream of a permanent colony on Venus seems doomed especially after the difficult but successful establishment of Venera. Though human descendants now have been born in the orbiting city, most earthlings believe humanizing the greenhouse planet is futile because it is too costly to conquer the ultra-hostile environment. Helen's few allies have their own "Outer Space" agendas that do not necessarily support Venera, but desperation causes an unsteady alliance. All this group needs is a miracle.

The impossible occurs when a planetary probe finds evidence that life once existed on Venus. Not long afterward, aliens make first contact with the earthlings. These aviarian people see Venus as "Eden" in light of their home planet nearing death. However, now the majority of Planet Earth refuses to cede Venus to these foreigners even if the planet cannot sustain the human life form. With no other option for the People and with the sudden obstinate decisions of the humans, war seems eminent.

THE QUIET INVASION is a powerful science fiction tale that breathes fresh life into the first contact story line. The plot is engrossing because the key human players seem real with their personal agendas. Their reactions to the realistic plight of the People make for a fabulous novel and in turn the aliens cannot grasp human need to possess something that is so unnecessary for survival. Sarah Zettel has written a must read for science fiction fans who like this author will scramble to obtain her previous books like RECLAMATION and PLAYING GOD.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: Even without reading it, this book seems great to me. Sorry, I can't add more, lol.

Rating:
Summary: not interesting enough
Review: First, I must say I gave up after about 300 pages, so I can only refer to what I read.
The main problem of this book to me was that it just was not interesting enough. There are many characters, both human and alien, but you do not get to care for any of them. All along the book I felt as if the author tried hard to get the story moving, but it just does not go anywhere. I'd think that a book that deals with the first meeting between humans & aliens cannot spend 70% of it's pages before the actual meeting happens. Besides, There is no reference (at least up to the point where I abandoned the book) to explain the physical qualities that enable the aliens to live and prosper on Venus. What are their bodies made of? Titanium?

I really wanted to like this book. The cover is so beautiful..Sorry, maybe next time.

Rating:
Summary: Sarah Z's best novel yet
Review: Helen Failia has almost singlehandedly created Venera, a scientific research base in the atmosphere of Venus, but as with so many research facilities, its survival hinges on precarious funding. Meanwhile, aliens who call themselves "The People" are looking into colonizing the planet-to them, its hot, high-pressure atmosphere provides a haven from their dying planet. But The People have environmentalism almost instinctively drilled into them, and the presence of humans gives them cause to stay away.

After a dramatic first encounter, conflicts rage on both sides: the pragmatic representatives of The People want to take what is theirs and to hell with the humans, who (without the ecological sensitivities of their race) are morally suspect already, while the more idealistic members try to do what is right while terrified that they me damning their race to extinction. Meanwhile, some humans embrace the arrival of the aliens, particularly those on Venera, for whom the arrival of the aliens has been a godsend in terms of ensuring the base's survival. Others see contact with the aliens as something to fight for, while yet others are fearful.

Decisions need to be made and they need to be the right ones, else one or both races might perish or go to war with one another. But the situation is complex and both sides persist in misunderstanding one another, often wrongly assuming a monolithic unanimity from the alien parties that simply doesn't exist, risking catastrophic consequences.

This may be Sarah Z.'s best novel yet. She has once again created an alien species that is almost more believable than her humans, and she has set up a gripping, page-turning conflict that I can't talk too much about for fear of giving things away. An excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: Great buildup to a disappointing conclusion
Review: I devoured this book. It's rare to find a writer who is so adept at inventing new civilizations with large and *interesting* casts of characters. Kettel kept me riveted to this novel of first contact with a race so different and so unique from Humans that I expected a lot more than I got at the novel's end.

In Quiet Invasion, the Humans have colonized Venus and discover that someone else got there first. Factions on Earth want to interfere with the Venusian colonists and the politics behind the Earth's world government and those on Venus made this fascinating reading. Kettel also delves into the dying world of the aliens (called The People) and as different as they are, there are also some basic commonalities with our race.

After all this tremendous buildup, Kettel totally disappointed me by story's end. Several storylines are unresolved and while one alien makes the ultimate sacrifice to help the humans, you have to wonder why the villain gets away with murder.

Kettel is a promising writer with tons of potential, but she needs to learn how to deliver the goods. If being ultimately disappointed does not bother you, then by all means, you should read this book. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

Rating:
Summary: A Mental Struggle
Review: I read about one-third of The Quiet Invasion and finally decided I didn't enjoy it enough to finish it. I think the author did a phenomenal job of creating a thoroughly alien personality. The book alternates between chapters written from a human's viewpoint and ones written from the alien's viewpoint. The alien is an interesting being, and one with values we can relate to. But I noticed that the passages about the alien would bog me down trying to understand the alien's thought processes and figuring out how the alien would be affected by the things it was seeing. So the great job the author did in creating this alien creature also disrupted the flow of the story in a serious way and created a major character whose thought processes are somewhat inscrutable. I think one of the jobs of an author is to put us in the minds of the characters. The author understands this, and does a fairly good job of putting us inside the mind of this alien. But this alien's world and motivating influences are so different from our own that being inside the alien's mind is bewildering. The author probably had everything worked out well in her own mind so that these passages are self-consistent, but that is not the same thing as relating things clearly to the readers. I think this was not done well, and for me, the book suffers greatly from it.

The other big drawback of the book is that the writing is somehow immature. Some of the characters are older and quite experienced, but their characters do not reflect their age at all. All of the human characters as far as I read seem to share the same levels of energy and the same strengths of their convictions, and are affected similarly by failures and successes. In real life people are widely diverse in these things. The story was pretty interesting, but the sameness of the characters made them too unreal to draw me in. Some people won't care much about this, and if you are intrigued by the story line you may enjoy the book. But if you look for real people in your reading, you will be disappointed. I am sure the author will continue to develop, and future books may not suffer from these problems. And she deserves recognition now for creating a marvelously alien character and culture. But I think it takes more than this to make a great book. I will look forward to better from her in the future, but I do not highly recommend The Quiet Invasion.

Rating:
Summary: The Quiet Invasion
Review: Kinda silly alien\human contact story. It was particulary difficult to get into the long winded interactions of the weird aliens. Trying to remember alien names is a pain. Who was the bad guy? Who was the good guy? Who cares. How does a biological based creature survive the extreme atmosphere of Venus without artificial protection? What did these aliens evolve in an acid pressure cooker? I think a brief explanation of how that might have come about would have helped. But, it wasn't a total wash. Not the best, but interesting enough that I finished it. Okay, that's it.

Rating:
Summary: Another winner from one of SF's brightest new voices
Review: Maintaining the high standards she set with "Fool's War" and "Playing God," Sarah Zettel's "The Quiet Invasion" is a very good hard SF book that doesn't skimp on characterization and good writing. In each of her books, she develops a well-realized alien race, and the People in this book - aliens who feel right at home on the blazing surface of Venus - are her best invention yet. Where the Dedelphi in "Playing God" occasionally seemed (and acted) like humans in alien suits, Zettle has taken care to make the People's culture in this book quite different from human, to the point where the two races sometimes have no matching cultural referents. In other words, sometimes her aliens are truly alien, and it's a rare SF author that can pull that off.

There are a few plot holes, and some loose ends that I would have liked to see tied up. But I enjoyed this book a lot. If you're a fan of hard SF, but not so hard that it clanks and whirrs, it's worth spending your money on "The Quiet Invasion." Sarah Zettle has definitely won a place on my coveted "Buy Everything This Author Writes" List.