But I don''t remember what the other is called . . . it should have at least 10-15 chapters, though.
Back in the day, I checked out Book 1 from the local library and loved it. It must have been before Book 2 released, though, because I remember leaving the library after dropping it off and thinking "I'll have to check again in a while to look for the next one" Cue me promptly forgetting to do that, lol. I ended up forgetting the name and most details, but I've thought about looking for it again many times over the years, even very recently, so it's an amazing coincidence to find it here!
Pretty sure we've hashed out how this is a terrible idea plenty of times, not the least reason for which is that it makes you an equally valid target for someone else with the same power.
In dismissing the allegations of xenophobia, I see many commenters here claiming that the premise more closely resembles colonialism.
The issue I have with this interpretation is that, if you look at real world xenophobic rhetoric, you find that, to the xenophobe, it is the immigrant who is the true colonizer. That is, everything wrong with colonialism is instead attributed to immigration.
Real immigrants are not evil enough to conform to the xenophobe's beliefs, so the xenophobe must create a narrative in which the basis of immigration is malice: Immigration occurs as a concerted invasion, the end goal of which is the replacement of whatever group the xenophobe identifies with; the immigrants stealing their jobs and wealth; the destruction of their culture; and ultimately, the xenophobe-group becoming subservient to the immigrants if not outright exterminated.
Thus, we find that a narrative work that is an allegory for colonialism, written by someone who is anti-colonialism, and a work that is an allegory for immigration, written by and for xenophobes, are fundamentally indistinguishable.
The reason I find this work more likely to be xenophobic than anti-colonial lies in the facts that the main characters are seemingly the only humans who hate the aliens, and that they are, or believe that they would be, persecuted and ostracized even by their fellow humans for daring to say anything negative about the aliens.
These facts are clearly analogous, first to the belief of exceptionalism typical of conspiracy theorists ("I alone can see the secret truths that everyone else is blind to"), and second to the frequent xenophobic complaints about "cancel culture", or "political correctness", or whatever the word of the day is ("I can't call immigrants evil monsters without people treating me like I'M the asshole! What is the world coming to?")