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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great buildup to a disappointing conclusion, May 10, 2000
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.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good book, but not more than that., September 13, 2000
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.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Mental Struggle, July 1, 2000
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.
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