I found this book to be a very mixed attempt. The main character was okay, not compelling, but reasonable enough to feel some sympathy for him. The alien seemed utterly ridiculous and I felt that the "dialog" between the two was many times nothing more than long piles of exposition tricked out in dubious formatting.
I also felt that many times the author used language designed to try and show how clever he is and forced. Like the repeated use of words such as "coruscating.". There were also several places where there seemed to be a lot of repetition, as though the book hadn't been edited very well.
All that said, I'd have probably been more inclined towards rating this as 4 stars if it wasn't for the ridiculous "end" right in the middle of the action. It feels like the writer just got tired at that point and quit. Novels that do this to me only display the writer's incompetence or blatant attempt to make the reader read the next in the series. There was a point near the end where the story could have been wrapped up fairly neatly, with enough resolution to make it satisfying and still leave an opening for a sequel, but the author chose deliberately not to do that. Books like this lose me completely and I shall not be reading further.