Exordia by Seth Dickinson

 

When Anna goes on a walk in Central Park, the last thing she expects is to meet an alien.  An alien with nine snakelike heads and who expects to come home with her.  Ssrin tells Anna that they share a connection that will never end.  Anna, who is a Kurdish immigrant, is not sure she believes Ssrin but the fact that no one else seems to see her lends merit to the idea.

Ssrin is on Earth for a reason.  She is a renegade from her home planet and is here to retrieve a spaceship called Blackbird.  It is in Anna's home country and she wants Anna to go with her.  Anna is contacted by the United States government which is trying to make sense of Blackbird.  She and Ssrin go there along with the military and an associate Defense Secretary.  There are already scientists from several countries there trying to figure out what Blackbird is.

The word isn't good.  The aliens want not only to retrieve Ssrin and Blackbird but plan to extinguish human life on Earth.  Anna reunites with her mother who she hasn't seen since she was a child and who leads the Kurdish immigrants in the area.  An Iranian pilot also joins the core group that is frantically working to find a way to save human life on earth.  Is it possible?

Seth Dickinson hit the science fiction genre with his book The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which is more of a fantasy.  This novel is more science fiction and has lots of military action and battles.  It brings together seven humans, each with their own strengths and weaknesses along with their own secrets, and bands them together to attempt the impossible.  There is lots of math and science and this is not a novel that one picks up for a light afternoon's reading; it requires concentration and intelligence to fully grasp the horror of what is happening and the science that may defeat it.  This book is recommended for science fiction readers.