Letter 44, Volume 1: Escape Velocity

Great hook - the incoming President reads the traditional handover letter from his predecessor, and learns there are aliens in the asteroid belt. I'd imagine that might mean a few policy changes. This is proper sense-of-wonder science fiction, with humanity small and powerless in the face of huge alien artifacts. There's a reason why the book is littered with Arthur C Clarke references. There's an on-Earth storyline as well, with political skullduggery and dirty tricks. This strand doesn't advance as much as the outer space one, but it's clearly going to be important to future books. I enjoyed this a lot, and I'm in for volume 2 and beyond.