Rating: 
Summary: Fakey, preachy, predictable, awful
Review: I expected something epic, something wonderful and startling and captivating. What I got instead was a classic tale of the mean, old aliens (15 feet tall) landing on our beloved world, , enslaving mankind, our resistance and eventual victory (?). The problem I have with books of this sort is the utter stupidity and illogical actions of the aliens. Why in the world would a race travel trillions of miles only to enslave poor, little us? And why all the trickery and not-so-subtle movements? Surely creatures this advanced could kill us all in a few minutes and have the planet to themselves.Then there is the group of resisters. It's a small world after all with this motley crew of multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-racial, multi-aged fighters - our own little UN of Earth folk. And despite the obvious, uh, disparity in skill level, technology and oh, about a million years of civilization, our group ekes out a tie. The ending ranks among one of the worst in modern fiction. After this LONG, not so great buildup, the aliens suddenly decide one day to pack up and leave. Seems they are lonely for the home world and decide that - hey, we spent a few trillion getting here and setting up so why not leave it all without rhyme or reason? We are back where we started, wondering and wandering about our navels and the strange way the universe acts. But we're gonna build a better world, yes-sirree! Hold your hats, partner, let me get my saw!
Rating: 
Summary: The best of books
Review: Man, what do these guys want a freakin space opera. Silverberg is amazing in this book because his story is honest. He doesn't just try to wow you with all the old cliche trick. This book isn't about the aliens this book is about the human spirit in face with tremendous odds and how mankind would get though it. This has got to be one of the best alien invasion stories ever. I recomend this book to everyone. If you want real Science Fiction on the subject and not a waste of time space opera read this book
Rating:
Summary: The best of books
Review: Man, what do these guys want a freakin space opera. Silverberg is amazing in this book because his story is honest. He doesn't just try to wow you with all the old cliche trick. This book isn't about the aliens this book is about the human spirit in face with tremendous odds and how mankind would get though it. This has got to be one of the best alien invasion stories ever. I recomend this book to everyone. If you want real Science Fiction on the subject and not a waste of time space opera read this book
Rating: 
Summary: No payoff for the time spent reading this book
Review: Many of the reviewers have said it better than I can.
Good premise with no payoff. I slogged through pages of character development to get to a anti-climatic ending. It's one of those books that has you flipping back over the last few pages saying "that's it"? I could understand that type of ending (Although many of the reviewers have revealed the ending I won't do that here) if
the whole novel hadn't spent most of the time implying that the humans were going to kick the alien's rear. Waste of time.
Rating: 
Summary: Echoes of Heinlein
Review: Some of the other reviews here have cited H.G. Wells as a key inspiration for this book, but personally I found strong echoes of some of Robert Heinlein's longer works, which are also often cast as family sagas (the Long and Farnham families for example). The difference here is that whereas Heinlein's heroes would probably have sprung into blazing action against the Entities, Silverberg's Carmichael clan are smart enough, while itching for vengeance, to recognise that resistance without a better understanding of their enemy would be futile. However, how do you understand an alien so advanced and inhuman that it regards you as little better than we regard a mosquito? Does an ant understand why we destroy its nest in our garden? Does a sheepdog understand why we want the sheep rounded up? Does a donkey know what load it is carrying, and why? This is the kind of gap Silverberg paints. Those who complain that the aliens' motivation is impenetrable, or that they could easily communicate with us, are missing the point.
How, Sliverberg is asking, do you keep the dream of freedom alive over many decades when nothing can be done to achieve it?
Rating:
Summary: The Alien Nothing
Review: The beginning of "The Alien Years" is strongly reminiscent of Niven and Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer". An endless stream of stereotypical Californian characters is introduced and a clausterphobic vision of Los Angeles on the alien D-Day is shown. The set-up of the problem of an alien invasion is very well conceived and executed but .... Unfortunately, Silverberg never solves his own puzzle. He, in fact, never solves any puzzle. I admit that not giving any hint of the alien's motives makes them more "alien" but Silverberg commits the same sin of the "X-files" ... that obsfucation = cleverness. I felt very cheated at the end of the book. I have been cheated in that Silverberg shows incredible laziness with the ending and that I think that Silverberg is conning the reader into buying another book. I, for one, am tired of lazy writers who cannot end a novel but feel compelled (by economics or lack of talent) to continue a short-story in 3 bloated novels. Silverberg has the talent to finish a story ("The World Inside" or any of the other dozens of fine works come to mind), therefore the reason must be economic. The sad fact of the matter is that I probably will buy "The Alien Years II". I would like to see Silverberg work out his puzzle. But I am afraid that a sequel will just lead to another sequel.
Rating:
Summary: More holes than Swiss Cheese
Review: There is more missing from this book than what is included. The plot's basic premise is these Aliens are so powerful that for the most part they ignore humanity, yet the book has humans interacting with them in a variety of ways. The silliest idea is that one of our computers could interface with the alien technology. Any aliens that advanced would have technology beyond our comprehension and not accessible through a DSL line. The worst aspect was the ending. I will not repeat it for those of you wishing to read this book, but don't expect any big surprises.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book did not have a problem keeping me interested and wanting to know how earth was able to end "the alien years" as they live under the opresive rule of these strange creatures. It was a mystery as to why the aliens came, why they did what they did and how humans were meant to be a part of their plans. And so, the end of the book came and...well, there were no answers to any of these questions. At the risk of ruining the book for those who haven't read it, the answer is that...the aliens simply left Earth without any reason as to why. We asre never given any answers to these questions and it made me feel as if most of the book was filler. Perhaps I needed to read it more as how accurate the book was in telling how earth would react to this situation, but I really felt that Silverberg put a great deal of "fake creativity" into this novel. What i mean by this is that he came up with intriguing things that he alens did and the reader is left being fascinated with why the alens would do these odd things....so the answer is simply that we do not know. To me, an author who does this indicates that he has the creativity to come up with interesting ideas, but lacking the creativity to at least fill inthe holes to give some kind of satisfaction to the reader.
I was not looking for some big war at the end, or a smah 'em up book, but at least some kind of resolution. Instead, the aliens just left. That's it. FOr that, I was profoundly disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent idea and structure; mediocre execution.
Review: This was my first Silverberg novel. The overall idea was nice, but I was a bit disappointed with the writing style and characters.
The events involve the unannounced arrival of aliens, who are technologically and intellectually vastly superior. They do not regard humans as being worthy of communication, except for using humans for labor. Effortlessly, they destroy all governments and much of human civilization, and enslave humanity for about half a century. Each time humans manage some act of resistance, they strike back brutally. They exert control telepathically, and are protected by the same ability from hostile humans. And finally, one day, the aliens simply leave. These are "the Alien years".
Throughout the Occupation years, humans continue to try to resist, rather feebly. The novel is mostly the story of a group of resistors.
First, there are the Carmichaels, a California family, that spends the occupation years breeding in a mountain ranch, collecting information on the aliens and dreaming of attacks, and eventually managing a couple of strikes. The life of four generations of Carmichaels is the heart of the story.
Added is the story of Khalid, the (...) son of a Pakistani immigrant girl and a rotten Englishman. Severely mistreated, he learns to hide his feelings and empty his mind, and this allows him to kill an alien without suffering their telepathic reprisal. Much later, he trains two assassins for the Carmichaels, to attempt to kill the "Prime" Entity, who the rebels hope is as vital to the aliens as a queen bee is to her hive.
The premise and basic science are certainly intelligent. The aliens don't simply start speaking English after a short period, as in a lot of American science-fiction. Nor do they behave just like the ordinary Western person, as aliens do in much of science fiction. They are, truly, _alien_.
The writing style is long-winded and could be tightened up enormously. This is my first complaint about the book. Sometimes the style is hideously "cheesy", as young Americans would put it.
On the other hand, the jumps through years is a nice technique that allows exploring the half-century after the Invasion. In each jump, the characters age, and this is done rather gracefully, the change in the characters as they grow older seems believable.
My second complaint: the descriptions of Carmichael family relationships, their emotions and personalities, were rather boring. These are some of the cheesier parts of the books. Reading about the patriarch Colonel was painfully boring and sometimes annoying.
I feel that, if all the world were to be colonized tomorrow, Third-World peoples would be the ones most likely to resist, with a history and culture of resistance. The story, after all, is one in which all of humanity is made to suffer what the Vietnamese have suffered under American occupation, or what Africans have suffered under Europe's yoke.
In this book, or course, the resistance comes from blond, blue-eyed Americans. Well, maybe anything else is too much to expect from any Western writer. This, I would say, is my third complaint about the book. It's unfortunate that the novel didn't come out of a Third World writer from a former-Colony country. Such a writer would have understood Occupation much better!
On the other hand, to be fair to the author, I would say he got much of the description of resistance right, except that real resistance might come more conceivably from those who have struggled against Whites in the past century.
I should finish by listing some things I liked. The Khalid character was an interesting creation, fun to read about but probably not very believable in the end. Near the end, Andy, great-grandson of the Colonel, runs the assault on "Entity Prime" by remotely directing several rebels. This was described quite well: a breathtaking, exciting description.
The description of scifi gimmicks are kept to a minimum. There is a "net" you can plug into using your implant, a now-traditional scifi concept also used by William Gibson, Dan Simmons, and many other authors. No pseudo-science arguments are given for explaining things. We learn rather little about the aliens; since the aliens don't bother to communicate, this seems fair.
In short, not a bad read, but it's not spectacular and it has weak points.
Rating:
Summary: The Boring Years
Review: When I first picked this the book while on holiday in Canada the back cover sounded like a real winner. However after a promising first chapter things quickly grind to a halt. Basically aliens invade Earth and take over the planet overnight. Then the Humans bumble around for the next fifty odd years doing very little till the aliens just decide to pack up and leave for no apparent reason. Now this may sound like a pretty simple and rather boring idea for a book but that is exactly what happens. The main characters are dominated by the Carmichael family. In fact there are so many Carmichaes in the book I had trouble telling them apart after a while, that plus the fact that half of them are named Anson didn't help. Some characters are well developed like Khalid and Borgman but the main family of resistance fighters (I use this term very loosly because in 400 odd pages they do very little resisting) are very forgettable. The alien motives are never even hinted at let alone explored and I felt very cheated when I finally slugged my way to the final pages. It was like the author coudn't think of a genuine reason why they were there at all. I kept reading just waiting for something to happen. Sadly it never came. 2 out of 5
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