one world where HUMANS are the alien threat

books:

	• Inheritor: Foreigner 3 (Foreigner) C. J. Cherryh DAW, 1997 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Next installment of epic story

As is to be expected, a well written book that completes the first triad of the Foreigner epic. It is a finish to the opening and the start of the next triad in the seriese.

inheritor, foreigner series

Like one other reader, I had read CJ Cherryh's foreigner series and then later read Ursula K. Leguin's Left Hand of Darkness (actually I am currently reading it). They are interesting books to compare, because they both deal with a human agent trying to relate to an alien culture in which people think so differently that it is hard to follow their meaning, and dangerous misunderstandings can result.
I like Ursula K Leguin's book better. CJ Cherryh's character, Bren Cameron seems to be afraid to be a person. A lot of her characters, for example, her main character in the Faded Sun Trilogy, give up their own souls in order to survive in an alien culture. Also, Tully in the Chanur books. All her characters are always walking on eggshells to avoid offending.
The envoy in Left Hand of Darkness has his own life and agenda, and you begin to think as you read that he is wrong in his assessment of Estraven, but you can respect him. I don't have a lot of respect for Bren Cameron. He is a pain in the neck.
The aspect of CJ Cherryh's Foreigner Series that does fascinate me is the idea of humans getting so far away from Earth that they don't know where Earth is and having the opportunity to start a whole new culture not dependent on Earth. I don't buy the lack of curiosity the Mospheiran's seem to feel for their origins. But the concept is interesting.

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one world where HUMANS are the alien threat

An accelerated pace and 3 months have passed since the end of "Invader".

Jase has settled in, the emissary from the orbiting space ship "Phoenix" which, like the bird of legend, returned from the unknown & unexplored reaches of deep space.

For a little history:
Cherryh sets her world with imposing aliens(Atevi) who are united by a single ruler, the aijii, under whom lords & council govern. Humans, lost on a space colonization mission, have settled on the Atevi world and exist in an uneasy truce, co-operating & trading only through one diplomat; Bren Cameron.

As the only contact between two species, Cameron is constantly protected by an extraordinary security force but his family is not so fortunate.
In a turbulent political climate on the human governed island, Camerons' family is endangered by radical factions & Yolanda Mercheson, the ships emissary has been threatened.

Against this background he must somehow train (Jase)the new Atevi ship-human diplomat in the tangled Ragi tongue, which has no word for trust, or love or even like. Yes, human and Atevi are biologically different, and a man alone in an alien culture must constantly rethink his most basic suppositions.

Jase & Cameron have made little headway after the initial friendliness of their contact & arrangements, but luckily Cameron's Atevi security have become his family.

Against the backdrop of the stars, and one alien homeplanet where HUMANS are the alien threat, the `space opera' plays out.

Well written, fast paced & enjoyable, an increasingly involving series. .

Kotori ojadis@yahoo.com

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Cherryh has never written a bad book

This is the third -- but far from last -- volume in the author's explication of the "Foreigner" universe. The human colony on the usland of Mospheira, isolated by the treaty that ended the War of the Landing, and the government of the atevi (under the aiji) on the western part of the mainland, have been getting along, more or less, for a couple of centuries, through the interface provided by the padhi, the official translater and "explainer" for each side to the other. At the moment, that's Bren Cameron, a very ernest diplomat who worries that he tends more to sympathize with and trust in the atevi he knows than with his own government back on the island. But then the ship that had dropped the humans on the atevi world in the first place returned -- and seemed as willing to deal with the atevi as with the Mosphei humans. The ship drops two more padhiin, one to each side on the planet, and much of the book concerns Bren's attempts to teach and indoctrinate a young man who not only has no experience of dealing with nonhumans, he even fears the open horizons of a planet, never having experienced any environment except the ship. On top of that, conservative, anti-atevi elements on Mosphei are trying thard to start another war, Bren's mother and brother are being harrased by the government, and the aiji has his own fish to fry. Cherryh posits a species that has no concepts of love, friendship, or trust in the human sense of those words, substituting instead "manchi," for which all lifeforms on the planet are biologically and psychologically hardwired, from lizards and riding animals to the atevi themselves. That's what governs relationships and loyalties, and even Bren, with all his experience, often has difficulty tracing its influence. Keep in mind that the second and third volumes aren't really "sequels." This series is actually a single, very long novel, divided into volumes mostly for marketing purposes; i.e., don't even think of trying to begin anywhere but at the beginning. But if you enjoy highly detailed and convoluted social, psychological, political science fiction, as opposed to shoot-'em'ups (although there's some of that, too), these books are challenging but also very, very enjoyable.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Six months after a human starship returns to the skies above the world of the atevi, the balance of power on the planet is dangerously upset, and Bren is put at the center of a firestorm that could consume them all. Reprint.

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