Ahoy there me mateys!  This novel deals with first contact and I was so ready for it.  Sadly I abandoned ship at 48%.  The first 20% or so was great.  Anna is a survivor of genocide and a former refugee.  She lives in NYC and frankly has a rather uninspired life.  Until one day, she goes to Central Park and finds an alien that apparently only she can see.  I loved the entire set-up of Anna and the alien's relationship.  Of course two aliens are at war which leads to trouble for the humans.

After the excellent start, an alien artifact ends up being in Kurdistan, which just happens to be where Anna is from.  The alien goes to get the item and leaves Anna behind.  Anna gets drawn right back in.  Then the book turns into a military sci-fi where aliens are barely present, lots of nuclear bombs fall, and all the human factions are fighting with each other.  There are multiple POV switches and flashbacks which made me lose track of the narrative.  The massive info-dumps about "cool" science ideas and physics did not help and only substantially slowed down the pacing.  The many, many added characters were rather two-dimensional.  It was also strange in that it felt the story was supposed to take place in modern day but then randomly would talk about Obama as president.

I ended up getting more and more frustrated even though I wanted to see what the Space Empire was going to do about the renegade aliens.  Apparently this book was also expanded from a short story, ends on a cliff hanger, and is the first of a series.  Would I have gotten the answers I wanted if I continued reading?  Not sure but mateys this was sadly a slog.  Arrrr!