Precursor by CJ Cherryh

This series of books seems to be composed of trilogies so far. So, according to CJ Cherryh, pick any third book and if you like it, continue with that trilogy. This book starts the second arc.

As a space plane carries atevi to the stars for the first time, they dock at an abandoned space station and begin to negotiate directly with Phoenix, the recently returned excession-spaceship. Three factions attempt to negotiate for what they need and want, while Bren, the interpreter and the person who understands the most about all three factions, tries to find a position that is best for all three. Conspiracy, complex political maneuvering, and watching how different technology levels and environments has affected different cultures differently.

Nonchalance was a position from which, if wrong, there was very little chance of recovery.

The story structure here fascinates me. Outside of a paragraph or two, no intro-info-dump afflicts the opening chapters. Rather, Bren leaves his family and Mospheira, heading back to say goodbye to Jase, who has been invited upstairs. When he boards the plane, surprised by the presence of a Mospheiran delegation to the station, he screws up initial contact with them. He fails to anticipate his own participation in the trip. Then he says goodbye to Jase and dines with Ilsidi. Only then does Tabini order him to go to the station. Alienating part of the Mospheiran delegation starts looking like a screw-up, instead of the warning he had intended. He realizes he enters this situation half-cocked, not having had time or foresight to debrief Jase first. And then opening negotiations with Ramirez go well, very well. Ramirez and Ogun see the reason of Bren’s arguments, the Mospheiran delegation overcomes their resentment and agree in principle, and everything goes better than expected. At that point, two-thirds of the book remains to be read. This tension of everything going well but so much book left to read crushes the hope Bren feels⁠—the reader knows some shoe is about to drop. But this setup brilliantly establishes the scene, what the reader needs to know for the next two-thirds of the book to work, shows Cherryh in control of the story and deftly maneuvering the reader’s experience to draw them into the story. With just one main character and point of view, she creates a complex situation and context that the rest of the story naturally and rationally falls out of.

And a great deal that was human wasn’t within his power to choose anymore. He’d already lost everyone on the island; he was about to lose his only human companion on the mainland. He wasn’t happy about it, but that was the choice far higher powers made.

And this tactic is a tendency for Cherryh. Or, as she puts it, “Anticipated consequences have to really happen, and have to be dealt with… no 'it was all a dream.'” Here, Bren anticipates struggles of negotiation on the station, with both Phoenix crew and Mospheirans. When things go swimmingly, the reader knows a catch is coming, because Cherryh has already built that expectation in. Looking at her characters the reader easily knows where the catch is coming from⁠—the captains have mostly failed to clearly communicate in good faith, and one hasn’t communicated at all. Turns out that one betrays the others. In short, she builds a complex situation, and watches what unfolds. She doesn’t plan, she lets the characters carry the story. Another Cherryh quote about writing, “The whole book, for me, is character.” In other words, her books come from her characters: they build the situations, their environment defines the worldbuilding, and their personalities provide the solutions and moral dilemmas. This strong writing tactic allows the book’s meaning and depth, even when the main character is weaker than Bren. Or, in Cherry’s words, “So 'well-drawn' and 'morally strong' adult characters of whatever gender carry swords and banners only for local color. More importantly, they carry principles or hypotheses of behavior as the useful and significant tools of their trade, and they test those principles for validity constantly against the situation posed… doing it in fiction so that people who read the story can gain the life experience not by a lecture but by deep analysis and integration of that character's experiences and reactions.” Yes please, I want to read more of this.

It wasn’t humanly possible. If atevi hadn’t been a continent-spanning civilization and a constitutional monarchy to boot, with rocketry already in progress, they couldn’t possibly have done it. . . certainly not in his lifetime.

Okay, enough about the structure. The best structure doesn’t conceal boring story, and this story supports the structure. Talking about stakes, these stakes put the species at risk, but that risk comes at an unknown point in the future, whenever the alien murderers get around to maybe attacking. So, due to distance, that tension feels distant. The tension on the characters rests on personal and political will, as well as their cultural goals.
⁠—Tabini wants to push atevi to FTL-levels of technology, because he believes in technological progress. Tabini thinks of knowledge as good, and sees giving labor to Phoenix as gaining immense knowledge and experience.
⁠—Mopheirans want to define a safe, stable economic footing they can operate from in the future, natural for a people whose neighbors technologically match them but control all the natural resources. Mospheirans also want to limit their risks, having history with Phoenix using them to do the dirty, dangerous work.
⁠—Phoenix wants fuel, labor, resources to continue their way of life⁠—wandering through the stars trying to establish new colonies. Being stuck in space, they must deal with the planet’s residents. They fear the atevi and Mospheirans, though the Mospheirans less so because they know that evil, the atevi are still unknowns to them. They also really want some help fighting the aliens that murdered the residents of the last station they built.
Within those cultural desires, each character also wills their own good. Whether it’s Kroger and her lifelong obsession with robots, Tamum and his desire for power, Ramirez and his need for speed and compromise, or Bren and his goal of peace and understanding, even a little segregation if it will help. These personal intentions wrinkle the cultural ones, giving complexity to the story. But I also see how these personal goals do not contradict the culture of the character: Kroger wants safety for Mospheiran lives, and her robot obsession roots in that desire; Tabini wants knowledge and experience in a place no atevi has gone, so his compromise secures that at some risk to atevi life; Tamum wants personal power, perverting the Phoenix desire for a safe haven to refuel at and trade with.

“One certainly does ask,” Bren said. “Kaplan, what are these people scared of?”
“The aliens, sir.” “Banichi and Jago aren’t aliens. You and I are. That below is their planet.”

With these desires in mind, the story makes perfect sense. Where then does mystery come from? It comes directly from a lack of information. The story shows some good negotiations breaking down as one side quits communicating. Bren doesn’t know what occurs, neither does anybody who talks to him. As a reader, I’m just as in the dark as Bren⁠—again, Cherryh’s tightly focused, third person narrative ties the reader directly to the character deftly. Tension also arrises from this not knowing. Bren has an agreement between Tabini and Phoenix secured. But when the Phoenix principle leaves the picture, he’s left stranded, trying to understand what the range of possibilities are. This mystery clears up when more information floods the reader. Rather like Asimov’s writing tactics, though Cherryh does it better by relying on characters.

He couldn’t beg off from his job or ask why in hell human beings couldn’t use good sense. He’d asked that until he knew there was no plain and simple answer.

One consistent and astounding strength of Cherryh is creating cultures. Above, I listed the main three cultures here and their general goals. These goals come directly from the worldbuilding, from the environment. Phoenix crew, stuck on a spaceship for years, relies on rigid discipline and schedules to survive psychologically, because they relied on that physically for so long. Any outside input puts them off. Atevi ruled their planet alone for thousands of years before humans came, and still do. Therefore, their desire to catch up with this excession-spaceship shows a desire to retain their place of dominance in their own affairs. Mospheiran’s descend from people who ran from Phoenix crew’s nastier behaviors, therefore their desire for protection. Also, their lack of natural resources compared to Atevi leave them desperate to find any niche they may fit in the future. Through these environmental, historical concerns, the cultures Cherryh builds make sense, feel realistic, despite being full of aliens and unlikely technology. She writes, worldbuilds, storytells, and entertains brilliantly.

Foremost of Mospheiran hazards, the Human Heritage Party had not the least idea how strange humans could get, on a world, on an island; on a ship, locked in close contact, communicating only on things everyone already knew. They thought “original humans” were their salvation; and there were no longer any “original humans.” Both sides had changed.

The one question, as always, in a series concerns the nature of sequels versus stand-alone works. I said in my notes on the last book, “I’m feeling that this series should have books that build on each other, not stand-alone novels, and that she's torn between the two strategies.” What I meant is that series books will often try to bring the reader up-to-speed with intro-info-dumps, or they’ll assume the reader has read the earlier books and leave new readers at a loss for understanding. Both dangerous tactics to me. Here, she clearly wants this one to stand-alone. I think this book perfectly deals with the issue⁠—a couple of paragraphs establishing context of the other books spread through the fist chapter, then trust the readers will understand and get on with the story. I don’t feel I need to have read the first three to get this one. Yet, the first three exist as context to this one, so maybe I found more to like in this one because I read the others. It would be interesting to find somebody who read this one first and discuss with them.

“So the paidhi, too, doesn’t trust implicitly.”
“I don’t trust. I find out.”

The theme here shows Bren keeping his head under fire, being flexible and humble, but also flexing his power when he needs to. Again, he has a hard job, and his regrets at what that does to his family life cause questions, but not wavering. It's a theme shot through the entire novel, that every character supports, while each add to the discussion. Loyalty to the ship, to Tabini, to Bren, to safety⁠—these all come into play as the situation changes dramatically and rapidly. But Bren's job here shows the old adage about war⁠—two seconds of terror and hours of waiting. Cherryh focuses in on the terror instead of letting the waiting drag the novel down. Bren wonders what he can do, then he does that, instead of wringing his hands at being unable to do anything. It's a theme that rings true in my life too.

“You, nadi,” he said to Banichi, “ought to be asleep.”
“A superfluous habit,” Banichi said. “Conducive to ignorance.”

I love this great book. Cherryh writes to her strengths without relying on her experience⁠—she writes a strong story and world that doesn’t offer fan-service. For me, this book exists in the same sentences as her best work. This exciting tale engages adventure, physical danger, complex political conspiracy, technology and environment providing vastly different characters and cultures, and deep personal insight to carry me away. I read the third third in a single sitting, last night, until 1 AM. I look forward to starting the next book tonight. This tour de force creates a book I intend to constantly refer to for my views of how to write well. Perhaps some small concession to showing the routine of the Phoenix crew would help new Cherryh readers, but I doubt it is necessary.

Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Again Asimov structures his story with scenes separated widely. Third novel in a row. This time Seldon grows older, each scene exists years apart. Instead of searching for Earth, or trying to understand humanity through different groups, here scenes show stages of the Empire’s collapse and Seldon’s aging. The journey idea of the last two novels serves this structure better, but hey, this wasn’t entirely unreadable.

Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.

Is there tension? I mean, by now everything published in the Foundation series points to Seldon winning. With Seldon facing physical danger and the interventions not yet recorded, I feel no tension. It feels more like, “I wonder how Hari Seldon gets out of this,” because I know he does. Though that tendency appears in a large amount of Asimov’s writing, it’s just more poignant in these two prequels. (This critique equally applies to the last novel too, Prelude to Foundation, though there the mythic tone imparted by the mystery-filled encyclopedia quotes really help my interest in it. It may just be that Seldon’s origins and early struggles interest me more.)

People live and die by nonsense. It's not what is so much as what people think is.

It’s a sticky trick, prequels. Asimov’s problem here is that he relies on the same old danger he always has--physical violence. I know Seldon survives to old age already, the title of the series gives away his success even to somebody reading these two prequels first. So, these two, and mostly this one, come across as fan service. Yet, in Prelude there still exists a chance of Seldon being some sort of conglomeration of people, a fiction, and this Seldon being replacable. But that doesn’t happen, and this story falls flat. Not because Asimov didn’t do what I would’ve done, that would be the worst critique ever; simply because I struggled to find tension in the last novel, hence the conspiracy theory, and failed to find it in this one.

You must have minimalism because every change, any change, has myriad side effects that can’t always be allowed for. If the change is too great and the side effects too many, then it becomes certain that the outcome will be far removed from anything you’ve planned and that it would be entirely unpredictable.

How could it be done better than this? Well, raise and answer different questions, apply different stresses, and resolve differently are ever only the three options. Instead of answering the questions of psychohistory, clearly what the fanbase wanted, he answers the question of what Seldon was like as an old man. Not as engaging. Instead of applying interpersonal conflicts and politics, Asimov apply’s physical violence that the reader already knows isn’t dangerous. He still has trouble writing characters. Instead of resolving this as a triumph, it takes a Shakespearean tragedy turn, which I don’t mind so much.

The word 'tradition' covered it all, as it covered so many things, some useful, some foolish.

All that said, this novel shows Seldon’s devotion, and losing everything he loves. The personal and public sacrifices to his job, to his calling. It’s chilling and heartwarming simultaneously. Asimov knows this story from the inside, this being his last written book, and it’s his final statement: beware dreams, you know not what they will cost, and prioritize rationally to ensure you serve what you believe. This theme engages the reader well, and it had better, because to book focuses on it.

You don’t need schooling to be a philosopher. Just an active mind and experience with life.

In short, not a great book. But also not unreadable. The theme grabbed me and I happily stared at the car wreck and triumph of Seldon’s life. However, when it was over, I rejoiced. I’m not sure I want to read more of Asimov’s long fiction. This is bad fan service.

People tended to avoid the humiliation of failure by joining the obviously winning side even against their own opinions.

Inheritor by CJ Cherryh

This third book in the Foreigner series closes the first trilogy’s arc. It shows why Bren has been promoted and promoted by Tabini. It concludes the conflict between Bren and the Human Heritage group, as well as between Tabini and the atevi aiming to take him out. It starts six months after the landing of the two humans from the spaceship Pheonix, and unfortunately the start is rough. Cherryh spends two full chapters rehashing what came before, filling in the reader on the six past months. And this intro-info-dump detracts from the novel to me. I’m feeling that this series should have books that build on each other, not stand-alone novels, and that she's torn between the two strategies. But, once Cherryh gets into the story, some real magic happens.

You couldn’t say that human word ‘border,’ either, to limit off the land passing under them. An atevi map didn’t really have boundaries. It had land ownership—sort of. It had townships, but their edges were fuzzy. You said ‘province,’ and that was close to lines on a map, and it definitely had a geographical context, but it didn’t mean what you thought it did if you were a hard-headed human official trying to force mainland terms into Mospheiran boxes. So whatever he had experienced down there, it didn’t have edges, as the land didn’t have edges, as overlapping associations didn’t have edges.

One of the strengths of this book is that Bren and Jase have a touchy relationship. Bren’s optimism at having Jase around turns sour when Jase doesn’t offer friendship or bring a good attitude—understandable to a human raised on a spaceship coming to a planet for the first time this late in life, but necessarily quite frustrating to his teacher. Everything is offputting to him: scheduling conflicts, the food, movement, weather, a horizon. Add ontop that Jase is learning a complex culture and language, and Jase is way out of his depth and unsure what is happening around him. He takes plans made on inadequate information to be Bren breaking his trust, and this mutual distrust guides much of the novel. The central question to this thread could be paraphrased, “how to repair a relationship with a power differential that got off to a bad start.”

The stirrings of affection that good actions made in a human heart.

As Cherryh tends to do, this engaging theme plays out across the backdrop of the whole novel—almost every single scene ends up informing, progressing, frustrating, or affecting this theme. I enjoy writers who take a complex situation and change it over the course of a book. If done well, readers will follow. Cherryh does it well by making it more complex. Jase and Bren have breakthroughs, setbacks, distractions, misunderstandings—and the more the reader sees, the more complex in their mind the situation is. Sometimes a key piece of information—like Jase's father's death's fictionality—is left as a mystery to the reader until much later in the novel, when everything suddenly falls into place. Also, the other parts of this novel, the other major threads running through it, inform the stakes of their relationship, inform the state of it as effectively as the two humans do. Everything informs everything else in Cherryh’s novels, and I couldn’t be more happy to read her work.

Let Jase see the historic origins of the atevi, let him experience the same sort of things that had opened the atevi world to his imagination. That was the plan. It was, though he hadn’t thought so then, the best thing that had ever happened to him in terms of his understanding of the world he lived in, a textured, full of smells and colors world that could fill up his senses and appeal to him on such a basic level that something in his human heart responded to this atevi place and taught him what the species had in common.

A second theme, and one that Jase and Bren share, is distance from family leading to reprioritizing familial connections. Their jobs keep them away from family. When Jase’s father dies—though that ends up being a codeword for Yolanda needing an escape from Mospheira—Bren struggles to comfort him, as Bren’s family is currently going through death threats and midnight phone call annoyances. Neither Jase nor Bren can do anything about either situation. This powerlessness forces both to face the possibility that something else is more important in their lives, and that’s an uncomfortable place to be. Bren believes in the greater good of broad peace. Jase believes in his own excession-ship emergency. For both, it’s a matter of do the job and give their families the best chance possible, or don’t do the job and everybody could die, including their families.

In such moments he asked himself what potentially disastrous and crazy idea he’d given his life to serve.

And that’s one thing this novel does well: tie up threads leftover from earlier books. Why did the ship come back? We now know because there is a threat within twenty light years. Will Bren and Jago ever sex? Yes. As awkward as human-alien intercourse inherently seems, after three books building it up, and a scant couple of paragraphs of sex-scene, it’s at least understandable, at least been foreshadowed enough, at least contextualized enough after the fact to not be seen as wish fulfillment. Will Human Heritage get control of all human government? No, but that’s the plot of this novel and becomes a close-run-thing. Will Tabini be able to gather enough allies to his side and overcome threats to his throne? Yes, but it requires the help of unexpected allies and personal danger to many.

“We suspect everything.” They had reached the doors. “We act on what we know.”

This tying up of threads reveals things that recast aspects of the first two novels. A mystery throughout was why Bren kept getting more and more political power. Well, this book finally explains it. Bren’s actions have directly led to Tabini gaining more allies. Ilsidi came to Tabini’s side through Bren’s explanations, actions, willingness to be tested, and forgiveness of his broken arm from the kidnapped interrogation. Geigi came to Tabini through Bren’s actions, even though those actions were largely accidental, his instincts led him to the right place. The island of Dur. The atevi public. The Assassin’s Guild. These things didn’t necessarily make sense to Bren or the reader throughout either, but by the end of this book, they do—again, Cherryh's tightly focused, third person narrative relies on the main character gaining understanding for the reader to.

Go to the leader. Always go to the leader when the bullets start to fly: rally to the leader.

And this recasting of earlier actions and motivations helps Cherryh resolve the book, gives closure. Sometimes it’s a character explaining things to Bren, sometimes it’s Bren taking those explanations and extrapolating what he learned about atevi from them into other mysteries. And sometimes it’s new information, like Jase’s end-of-book reveal about a potential rival in space. In her earlier works, Cherryh would often rehash circumstances through interior monologue, to explain to the reader what new information meant to older actions. Here she does the same, but spread across three books instead of just one. It’s a tactic that keeps me reading Cherryh, even though it sometimes manifests as a horrid intro-info-dump.

And in that one simple example he saw why humans could become so disruptive of atevi society in so short a time, just by existing, and dragging into their liking persons who really, never, ever should be associated with them in the atevi sense. Humans had created havoc without knowing the social destruction they were wreaking on the foundations of society where people could be badly bent out of their comfortable associations.

At the end of this book, I was thrilled with the series so far. But those first two chapters did detract from this book. The pacing was strange because of them. Usually there’s some action to grab the reader’s attention right off, followed by a slow rise in comprehension and tension, then an explosion of action to end the book. Here there’s just the slow rise to explosion, and it doesn’t work as well for me. Maybe she thought that because this is the third in a trilogy, the action at the end of the last book sufficed to draw the reader into this third book. And it did for me. But it also means that this book isn’t great. It’s good, but not great. Even after three books, the characters still grow, and the aliens still feel alien. Brilliant writing. In the way that everything is interconnected, this is a complex book of political conspiracies and personal relationships—just what I want.

So if their languages didn’t say quite the same thing and their bodies didn’t quite match and the niches they made that said this person satisfies enough requirements to make me happy were just a little different-shaped in their psyches, the center of that design might match, leaving just the edges hanging off. But didn’t his relationship with Barb have unmatched edges? Didn’t every close relationship?

One last thing to note here is that Cherryh seems to have grown comfortable with her world. Instead of constantly saying that some numbers are good and others are bad to the atevi, here she starts to give examples: three is good, four and two are bad. This also comes out in her word choices, as she starts to let some really beautiful sentences inhabit the novel. For example, near the end she writes, "The vast dish passed behind them, the dusk deepened to near dark, and the company stayed close around the dowager as they rode." That’s a really well written sentence, hinting at the context in ways understandable to the reader: the vastness of the central communication station on the planet looking out to the vastness of space, the timing of their arrival at dusk, the priorities and associations of the people who surround the dowager. And yet the sounds it creates are pleasing to my ear, despite being a summarized list of sorts, setting a scene, closing another scene. All that consonance will grab my attention every time.

That office building out there, the Maganuri Building, built to house the study committees proposed by the legislators opposed to the growth of government, was beginning to be plagued by sewer and electrical problems. The opposition blamed sabotage by Tabini’s agents, or by the old aristocracy, a wide range of conspiracy indeed, and no few of the commons avoided it and wouldn’t attend committee meetings there because of the reputed bad numbers.

A couple more quotes I wrote down while reading:

It was a risk. Their whole lives were a risk. But you limited them where you could.

A written mistake might fall into the hands of news services interested in catching the paidhi in such an infelicity. The press daren’t take on the aiji, mustn’t, in fact; but a lord of the Association was a fair target; and in less than a year he’d become such a person—protected, still, in certain ways, but increasingly fair game if he made a blunder that saw print.

As a minor court official, again, he’d been immune from such public relations assassinations. As a major player in affairs of state, he, like the aiji, was a target of such manipulators, and his strike in return was a standing order for commendations to any clerical who by handwriting, postal mark, or other clues, identified one of these nuisances by name, handwriting, and residence and posted them to others in the pool.

Invader by CJ Cherryh

This book showcases Bren coming to grips with four aspects of his world: the invasion of the Phoenix, his own power, the complexity of three societies, and his own motives. But really, the latter three aspects fall out of the first one—the arrival of an excession spaceship just before the book starts. That’s the first point I want to make: Cherryh uses that excession ship to spark the rest of the story by exploring it deeply. Nothing is wasted here, Cherryh uses most of the whale. The flipside, of course, being that each page isn’t jam-packed with action. (If you want that, go read the John Carter books. I didn’t hate them.)

Average people didn’t analyze what they thought: they thought they thought, and half of it was gut reaction.

In the Pheonix’s arrival, Bren faces an immense amount of work. His job is to translate humans to atevi, and vise versa. Yet nobody has seen the ship or heard from its crew for around 200 years. That time includes a war between the atevi and the humans who stayed behind, a breakdown of the station, the landing of the rest of the station bound humans—there are significant cultural differences between Mospheira and Phoenix. (Example: America 200 years after independence from the UK) And after a week kidnapped in the woods, Bren finds himself better able to understand his atevi kidnappers instead of his fellow humans. The plot of the book traces Bren, Tabini, Deana, Ilisidi, and the human reactions to the ship’s return, culminating in a landing of two illiterate translators from the ship, formalizing the new three-way power structure.

The knowledge that if the future of humankind on Mospheira and in this end of the universe wasn’t in his power to direct—it was damned sure within his power to screw up.

One of the foremost problems is Deana. Because of his kidnapping, the human government flipped and sent his backup—a woman he has had a lifelong rivalry with. They come from different political camps—she is human-first, while he tries to foster cooperation and communication and equality between the atevi and humans. Their political backers differ. Their strengths, weaknesses, and experiences differ. She does things Bren wouldn’t, and he certainly does things she wouldn’t. Tabini, the head of the atevi, sides with Bren, putting Deana’s life in danger. After she attacks Bren, and after some significant empathy thought experiments, he tries to exercise some of his power to save her life and find a place for her before the human government decides what to do with their situation. This backfires on him when Deana gets kidnapped/runs away to Tabini’s enemies, and that devastates Bren. He went out on a limb for her, risking his political power to take her under his wing, and she throws it all to the wind to attempt to throw him under the bus. To Bren, she calls into question the future of peace and the entire world for her political beliefs that he doesn’t find justification for in his experience. Bren starts to learn about power here, personally, not from theory. As he uses his power sometimes it comes off great, twice people try to assassinate him, and he usually gets betrayed left and right.

“How do you define fool?”
“I don’t attempt it. I wait for demonstrations. They inevitably surpass my imagination.”

In learning about power, Bren finds the central struggle of his political position: the competing authorities of atevi and human are personally competing priorities to Bren. He must protect himself from Deana’s backers, which means he cannot communicate fully with any humans. Yet his conscience guides him to acts that some humans consider treason, potentially endangering his family. He justifies this with the idea that his actions serve a greater good—a better future for more people. He attempts dispassionate observation, but he also feels anxiety and internal conflict. I really resonated with this theme throughout the book, and I think it is the main theme here. He second guesses himself, and this leads to a deep character study by Cherryh: what could living a good life cost?

Death wasn’t an option, he thought, drawing a breath and feeling pain shoot through the shoulder, the wind from the air ducts cold on his perspiring face. But fainting dead away—that, he might do.

This theme of fighting against self-interest is poignant throughout the novel. Deana accuses Bren of self-interest and selling the humans out, but she’s coming from a place of wanting human dominance over the atevi. Her political backers align with their Human Heritage Society, which seems as racist as it sounds. But the atevi do not buck the trend of distrust: various atevi associations are as anti-human—more so as assassination remains a very real possibility in their culture. Through all this, the addition of the third wheel of Phoenix up there in space, creates a very complex background to Bren’s actions. And that’s what this book is: complex political, cultural, and personal conspiracies played out over three growingly complex societies.

Reality always put a texture on things, a chaotic topography of imperfections, that imagination had foreseen as smooth and featureless.

Cherryh’s tightly focused, third person narrative voice allows this complexity to dawn on the reader slowly. As Bren comes to grips with the importance of FTL and number-counters, so does the reader. As he starts to guess at atevi and human connections and reasons, so does the reader. Instead of dumping everything on the reader at the outset, Cherryh slowly doles out information. Questions unravel into complexities over chapters, giving the reader time to ingest new context and reflect on its importance. Again, I’m a huge fan of Cherryh’s voice. But usually she uses more than one main character to let the reader in on some of the context. Here she focuses solely on Bren. I want another character, sure, but by focusing solely on Bren, she brilliantly paces the flow of information to the reader, building the context throughout the book, increasing the complexity throughout the book, helping the reader understand more as the book goes on.

For a human, he thought, he was doing remarkably well at figuring out the entanglements of man’chi after the fact; he’d yet to get ahead of atevi maneuvering—and he’d no assurance even now he was looking in the right direction.

One thing Cherryh consistently does is war. Though it may not always be total war, she usually builds the characters and their positions early in the book, before somebody makes a move and it all gets decided on a battlefield. This tendency echoes human history. It shows yet again that Cherryh consistently touches on what makes us human throughout her works—we try and try to avoid conflict, but sometimes conflict is all that will decide the issue. In our lives, that often means conflict other than physical. Yet when the stakes are as high as Cherryh’s narrative makes them, physical violence seems unavoidable. This means that her books usually end with a bang, as this one does.

Ludicrous, on one level. Grimly humorous. And not. Atevi historically didn’t engage in vast conflicts, when little ones would do. But important people and ordinary ones could end up quite effectively dead.

I realize in this second book that so far the series has been court drama, an understated comedy of manners. Also a first-contact tale where the aliens are humans and the residents are atevi. It’s starting to seem like Cherryh wants to explore first contact past the first few days of contact, and really delve into cultural differences, cultural relativity, and struggles inherent in trying to work together when so many groups are self-serving. I’m along for the ride so far, if she does. Another good book here.

He asked himself how he’d gotten into this position, except one good intention at a time.

Foreigner by CJ Cherryh

Foreigner lagged a little in the middle of the book for me. Cherry lays out this complex society, complex worldbuilding, complex understanding of atevi cultural norms, in stages that track with Bren becoming a different person than at the start—braver, more understanding of those around him, and more realistic about risks and rewards. More atevi, less human. Naturally, Bren needs to be left alone some, in order to allow these changes to proceed realistically, to be processed in his mind. Rather than skipping this step, Cherryh writes it out. All of it. Using Bren’s changes to further illuminate aspects of the world, to recontextualize earlier situations, to drive home human and atevi relations and differences. She does this through repetition, rephrasing, and showing. The Bren of the start would not have been saddened by the death of one of his torturers. The Bren of the end is saddened by it. And this difference is key to the story's arc.

Trust was a word you couldn't translate. But the atevi had fourteen words for betrayal.

This structure—action followed by internal change—stops and starts the pace of the novel. First, a ship launches into FTL and doesn’t come out where they aimed, cue panic and sacrifice—and a lack of reflection here disorients the reader. Then, 100 years later, the ship’s descendants essentially crash-land on a planet that is already occupied by atevi, and one human gets kidnapped—and a lack of reflection here disorients the reader. But rather than this being a compilation of short stories, the next start is the last start, when, 200 years later, a man named Bren shoots at somebody invading his bedroom, followed by quite a few pages of reflection on that and fallout from it. Bren goes to Malurgi, followed by same pages of reflection. Bren drinks poisoned tea, followed by same. And then happenings start to stack again, start to occur simultaneously and speed the pace back up: the power goes out and Bren finally gets Jago to open up, followed by some reflection. Then Ilsidi’s wild ride, tourists coming to the castle, and another assassination attempt all happen in the same scene. And that’s when Bren really loses control. Too much is happening too fast for him to track with, leaving the reader to fill in some blanks—in a great way. And then we’re already at the breakneck paced end of the book, with the flight, the fights, and the arrival of the excession ship, which recontextualizes the whole novel up to that point, but still leaves mystery to the atevi reactions.

The sounds that reached his ears were rich enough, the wind and the creak of leather and jingle of harness and bridle rings, the scuff of gravel, the sighing of the grass along the hill—but he’d never been anywhere, even Taiben, where he couldn’t see power lines, or hear, however faintly, the sound of aircraft, or a passing train, or just the generalized hum of machinery working—and he’d never known it existed, until he heard its absence.

The middle is bookended by consistent action, is more introspective to Bren beginning to finally understand the alien atevi culture than anything else. This contrast made it feel like it lagged a little for me. I know Cherryh is using this space to really put flesh on her world—and it worked brilliantly. Somewhere about the torture scene I realized in my head, I believed and understood, just how alien atevi culture is to humans. A piece, a clue clicked into place, and I understood Bren's struggle as a result. And that is an important realization for the readers. Cherryh’s tactic did what it should have. But, and this is merely a niggling point as I did love this novel, the middle lagged a little in interest. Don’t read this book if you’re looking for pulp fiction, it’s a lot of worldbuilding.

He’d fired a gun, he’d learned he would shoot to kill, for fear, for—he was discovering—for a terrible, terrible anger he had, an anger that was still shaking him—an anger he hadn’t known he had, didn’t know where it had started, or what it wanted to do, or whether it was directed at himself, or atevi, or any specific situation.

Cherryh focuses here on one character. With her distinctive voice, it takes time to extrapolate a whole world from that one character. Yet she builds Bren into such a strong character that I understand his optimism, care, goodness, before they're explicitly stated. She shows and tells, perhaps telling just a bit too much, and Bren’s path through the world allows her to engage other interesting characters. Ilisidi, Cenedi, Jogi, Banichi. I couldn’t stop reading. It’s a rare book that grips me and fills my mind like this one did. But the point of these notes is to find why it did grip me.

Maybe it was paralysis of will. Maybe it was instinct saying Be still—don’t defy the only friend humanity has on this planet.

She tells the alien atevi and the alien human so well. This is a characteristic strength of Cherryh’s: alien cultures. Her work here starts with both seeming familiar and safe, but as questions and unexpected twists and turns begin stacking up in Bren’s mind, the alien nature of human to atevi grows clearer. Bren embodies Polybius’ task—Bren is the Mospheira human sent to the atevi to work closely with their ruler, explaining humans to atevi, and atevi to humans. So this discussion of the differences between the two cultures constitutes his profession, and a main focus of the novel.

As if the mind could leap, that quickly, back to ski catalogs. His damned well couldn’t. It didn’t like informational voids; it didn’t like silent guards lurking in his reception room, or the chance there was a reason to need them, possibly slipping up the stairs outside.

Yet Cherryh doesn’t focus on the differences so much on Bren trying to understand them, and overcome them. Some of my favorite moments were Bren steeling himself for taking up the gauntlet the old woman had thrown down—drinking her tea after she had already poisoned him with tea, being frank where she challenges him to, riding the hunting beasts over the mountains, and finally bravely saving her life without any need, an act that earns her and her bodyguards’ respect. He realizes this tough old woman, who has a fondness for surrounding herself with young men, tests everybody around her, is sharper and more perceptive than everyone around her, and has standards that she rigidly holds. Yet instead of treating all of this like some alien inexplicable trait, Cherryh treats Ilisidi as a character. A normal character. She’s not human, and she doesn’t come off human, but she is just another character with all of her preferences and dislikes.

He made an effort to fold up the computer. Jago shut the case for him, and disconnected the cord. After that—the necessity of getting up. He made it that far. Ended up with Banichi’s arm around him, Banichi standing on one leg. The dowager-aiji said something rude about young men falling at her feet, and go sit down, she was in command of the plane.

And Cherryh builds the atevi culture out of these character studies. Bren at the start only understands Tabini and two other atevi. Then he realizes that he doesn’t understand Tabini and starts to pay attention to those around him. By the end of the book, both he and I understand atevi culture only as far as the people Bren knows: Cenedi’s professionalism, Ilisidi’s desires, Tabini’s desperation, Banichi’s lack of understanding, Jago’s discomfort with human ideas, Djinana’s devotion to cultural history. Through these characters, a range and diversity of atevi culture is shown and told. Instead of dumping some wikipedia-esque explanation on the reader, Cherryh takes Bren into the culture, with the reader riding inside his head, and lets the culture explain itself. This is some of her strongest storytelling in this way. And the theme should be readily apparent by now: overcoming differences in priority respectfully, relying on empathy. In other words, who is the real alien here? By the end I understand less about human culture on Mospheira, because Bren and the whole book have been in atevi lands.

Not damned fair. The only thing in his life he enjoyed with complete abandon. And it was a damned death wish.

The repetition Cherryh typically engages in often strengthens the reader’s understanding. But here it goes a little overboard. It’s a little heavy handed through Bren’s struggles, how his brain keeps trodding over the same ground again and again and again. I understand that in reality, as my brain does the same when faced with problems like this—unintended offences, a lack of understanding other people, cultural differences, mistakes at work. But it’s not the most enjoyable to read through the whole book.

He’d become, he decided, thoroughly paranoid. Afraid. And he didn’t think a crew from the national news network was going to produce explosive devices. It was stupid.

That all said, this book read very well. These two small critiques of Cherryh’s work still allow this book to be better than most science fiction I have read. It’s not her best work, but it’s also not the forgettable, necessary intro that many reviewers have dismissed it as. Yes, I want more complexity and less repetition in Bren’s development. Yes, the middle grows a little stale because of that over repetition. But find me another writer capable of injecting such a deep understanding of alienness, and I’d be really surprised. Well worth reading, and I love it.

He wished he’d done better than he’d done. Didn’t know how he could have. He was alive and they hadn’t found him. Better than some of the professionals had scored. Better luck than poor Giri, who’d been a decent man.

[Edit 10-2-19: When first introduced to Bren, Cherryh tells the reader that he works as a diplomat and translator. Yet Cherryh’s plot and characters show him like a spy: his kidnapping, torture, ignorance, and actions do not match up with what Cherryh tells about Bren. By the end of the book, I realized that Bren learning about his ignorance was a point of the book. He slowly becomes more competent through the next two books, but clearly shows a rising understanding, and the personal conflicts of a changing role in life, changing personality. By the time of the fourth book, his competence is clearly shown and told. And Bren finally starts to really shine.]

[Edit 10-11-19: One thing just struck me about why this book doesn't work as well as later books in the series: Cherryh tells us again and again that Ilisidi is difficult to deal with, but she seems most pleasant on the surface. The poisoning comes off accidental, and she seems to be forced into the interrogation. Instead of showing us just how difficult she can be, Cherryh asks us to trust her, and that's a tall task to trust her through 90% of the novel when the evidence on the page implies the opposite.]

Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov

After the surprisingly good Foundation and Earth, Prelude to Foundation also relies on a journey to drive the narrative. Instead of running towards something though, here the characters run away from capture. The protagonist, hyper-rational Hari Seldon, founder of the Foundation, journeys through several locations to come to grips with competing interpretations of human nature and power, and help codify his own.

⁠Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

Imperial Sector: First, the Imperial sector, where the whole truth cannot be seen from the outside. Seldon gives his paper, and the results of the talk surprise him. Chetter Hummin looks like a normal businessman, functionary, but ends up being tied in deeply with elements antagonistic to Imperial power. A couple of brightly dressed youngsters end up being thugs. Seldon ends up being a kung-fu master. The point here is that the outward appearance, and even the way people interact, doesn’t necessarily reveal their nature⁠—and can misdirect, especially when cultural differences stand in the way. The people here orbit power the closest of anybody in the empire. Power is attracted to itself. And power is a sliding scale where the closer you are to other people with it, the more of it you have. Seldon’s talk sets him up as a potentially powerful figure, and even potential power attracts the powerful around him. That’s his first lesson, his first unexpected truth.

I’ve seen many people with status, but I’m still looking for a happy one. Status won’t sit still under you; you have to continually fight to keep from sinking.

Streeling University: Dumped into familiar circumstances, an idyllic university, Seldon should feel comfortable and safe here. And he takes that feeling too far. He ignores what he learned in the Imperial sector. The new dimension to his life that the adventures in the Imperial sector added do not come home to his mind until it is too late and he heads topside. The familiarity of the college atmosphere blinds him to the pitfalls, potential traps, and importance of his flight. This second lesson of the book shows the importance of mental agility. Recognizing truth is not enough if you don’t allow it to change your life and thinking. Even Dors cannot warn Seldon effectively. Though a place of learning that demands much from the students, the faculty grows complacent, throwing ideas out there for the sake of inconsequential arguments, lulling each other to bumbling tenure. Seldon’s agility led to his sensational paper, yet he doesn’t apply that throughout his life and it gets him into deep trouble. In other words, dispassionate, detached, academia or knowledge doesn’t excuse you from still being acted upon by that knowledge.

“A great many things are possible.” And to himself he added: But not practical.

Topside: The danger he worked himself into shows up as he heads outside the domed surface of the planet Trantor. He almost dies here, maybe twice, certainly once. An aircar of some sort seems to be searching for something, and all of the unexplained phenomena of his time at the university finally catch up to him in his mind. Here he finally believes the truth he learned in the Imperial sector, and he interprets the aircar as hunting him, so he runs away. Then a freak storm hits and, lost, he almost freezes to death. In addition to finally believing his own power, Seldon learns about people here. He simply doesn’t know the intentions of those around him⁠—a fact driven home by the quotes at the beginning of the chapter. And the discussion about the aircar and the storm drive home the point that humans always operate off of incomplete information. Yet here is also a point where nature is the main enemy, not human nature, and this inclusion helps muddy the human waters, showing that what people serve helps them prioritize their actions, cares, and life.

How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding.

Mycogen: The religious fundamentalists of Mycogen show a closed off culture. They export the highest quality food, but do not import. They are past and future looking, and do not pay much attention to the present. Their history shows Aurora, a semi-mythical planet to them and where humans orginated, and they revere robots⁠—a technology now lost, or outlawed. Seldon’s idea is that he can extrapolate from a single group of ancient humans the truths about all humans that he needs for psychohistory. He’s hoping that by collecting a ton of truths, he will be able to more easily get at the underlying premises that those truths fall out of, and develop psychohistory. Dors, as a historian, has been telling him that history is too complex for that⁠—at this late stage of the empire, too much is known to make a broad overview useful because it is too broad, or a detailed overview possible in one lifetime. History being written by the victors certainly doesn’t help either. So Seldon realizes here that history will not work perfectly the way he wants it to. Too little is known about Aurora to help him, too much is known about everything else. But he also sees in this isolated society truths that the more open university setting also allows. In short, he has looked at two extremes⁠—conservatives and liberals⁠—and seen the humanity that overlaps, seen the reasonings and premises of both, and is finally able to draw some conclusions towards psychohistory.

“There are many people, many worlds who believe in supernaturalism in one form or another... religion, if you like the word better. We may disagree with them in one way or another, but we are as likely to be wrong in our disbelief as they in their belief. In any case, there is no disgrace in such belief and my questions were not intended as insults.”

Dahl: Blue collar and violent. Shanty towns and always dreaming of being elsewhere. Yet this environment doesn’t lead to an all-in-this-together comaraderie, but rather yet another rigid social structure. It’s played as petty in the novel, but Seldon realizes that humans do separate themselves into social structures⁠—whether they are defined strictly like in the Imperial sector, or merely by unspoken convention like in Dahl, and all stages in between as shown in Mycogen and the University. He also learns that history can be contradictory, as he meets a woman who remembers tales of Earth and Aurora and these tales contradict Mycogen tales in interesting ways. He finally gives up his hope of short-cutting psychohistory through extrapolating from a focused historical study. He begins to realize that the psychology of humans had such a profound impact on history, that studying psych can help explain history.

There is a longing for a supposedly simple and virtuous past that is almost universal among the people of a complex and vicious society.

Wye: And then the foreshadowed kidnapping to Wye. Throughout the book the mayor of Wye is mentioned as a frustrated claimant to the throne, but once they get there, the characters find a “normal” society within the larger imperial sphere. It’s not the downtrodden of Dahl, or the isolationism of Mycogen, or the open temporary habitation of the Imperial sector or the university, this is middle class territory. This isn’t open or closed like the university and Mycogen, there are aspects that are open and some that are closed. It’s a balanced society. It’s not as poor as Dahl, nor as rich as the Imperial sector. Yet Seldon’s conclusions from those other sectors play out in how the mayoress loses her power: being close to her father’s power she is attracted to power, by not testing her power she doesn’t let the truth of the power change her life, she misinterprets the intentions of those around her, she illustrates the danger of living in the past and future at the expense of the present, and all of her failings are based on the psychology of humans more than the use of power. This section tends to confirm the earlier sections.

“It is not important what can or cannot be done. What is important is what people will or will not believe can be done.”

In this book, Asimov allows mystery. Where he usually explains all, here he leaves mysteries with the aircar, Dors’ nature as robot or not, and the inner workings of psychohistory. His tendency to point out that he has left mystery here unfortunately comes off heavyhanded, but the fact that there is mystery here adds to his repertoire as a writer in ways I appreciate. I like authors asking me to make up my own mind. I think the aircar was searching for him. Can I prove it? No. And that’s an important aspect of a book staying with me.

“Historians pick and choose and every one of them picks and chooses the same thing.”

In all, this is a good book. Not one I’ll be keen to reread again, as Asimov’s writing still seems aimed at a young adult audience in word choices, sentence structures, and heavy handedness. However, I liked this book more than I expected. I think Asimov is stronger as a short story author dealing with less ideas than a full novel typically relies on, and these short vignettes of Seldon’s journey across Trantor tend towards being like short stories. It’s an example of an author storytelling to his strengths.

“If people believe this, they would act on that belief. Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted.”

Cuckoo's Egg by CJ Cherryh

A unique alien child raised by a warrior and judge learns about his past, the culture that surrounds him, and himself. A childhood spent training mentally and physically prepares him for a future he doesn’t know until the end of the book. He doesn’t grasp the true importance or nature of his difference with the people around him. He struggles with his lack of knowledge, mistakes, and strict upbringing. Yet there is tenderness and a deep humanity in the middle of all of the political maneuvering, conspiratorial violence, and eventual war. His context dawns on the reader as it does on him. The obvious needs stated here: this is a book about a humanoid race called the Shonunin, who resemble cats in their violence, appearance, and mannerisms.

When I lost the most of my hand, I thought I would never play. I recovered that. Other things I lost. You gain no virtue from loss you never know.

Again, Cherryh holds her cards close to her chest for much of the novel. But here it doesn’t annoy me because the coming-of-age story that takes over for much of the novel engages me better than the rudderlessness of Voyager in Night. And a big part of that engagement arises from Thorn’s unusual childhood. It’s part master-pupil, part father-son, part teacher-student. As Cherryh establishes and explores these aspects of Thorn’s upbringing, hints and clues drop about the context. Dunn’s reticence doesn’t pull down the novel like the aliens’ reticence did in Voyager in Night. Cherryh strikes a useful balance between the known and the unknown that keeps the reader engaged. She does this through Thorn’s thoughts. He’s a curious, intelligent child trained to think critically, and his reactions and observations speak volumes at what’s happening behind the scenes of this novel. From that early hint of Dunn’s political power, “I’d remind you that you promised me anything [Ellud],” to the suddenness of the civil war and reveal of Dunn’s long-prepared plans, the reader knows some context exists that will shift the entire narrative from a coming-of-age story, and is just as curious as Thorn about it. Yet she drops enough hints in Thorn’s thoughts and Dunn’s enigmatic ways to keep the appetite whetted.

There's always something left to lose. When you think there's nothing more you're a fool, Thorn; there's something till you're dead. And after that⁠—gods know.

And even that civil war reveal shows Cherryh’s power as a writer⁠—it takes another span of pages for the questions to be answered, even while she actively fleshes out the context. Instead of revealing the answers and then putting the context into focus, Cherryh uses the context to help Thorn come to grips with the answers before the answers arrive. This shows Dunn’s character, the complexities of the context, and Thorn’s nature, helping the reader come to grips with the importance of the answer before receiving it, instead of just giving them the answer and then trying to make it important after the fact. Brilliant storytelling again from Cherryh.

"Exactly. Wants to play politics. On the issue the whole thing's gone sour." Ellud made a helpless motion. "Duun, hard as it is to think anyone could be shortsighted enough⁠—"
"I don't find it hard at all. I have a very fine appreciation of venality. And stupidity. Tomorrow doesn't come and a stone cast up doesn't come down."

This novel shows how Cherryh tells a story without doing an intro-info-dump. On page one an alien baby is dumped on Dunn’s doorstep. The only context we get is that Dunn could be called four things, and then the coming-of-age story takes over. I hate intro-info-dumps, and Cherryh is prone to them. But she begins this story without one, and it helps me care about the characters before being asked to care about the names of places and aspects of the context. This novel helps show how starting in media res instead of in explanation is always a strong tactic.

A world that had just reached out into space⁠—and all of a sudden⁠—discoveries that shatter it. Energies that, gods help us⁠—we're still unraveling, technologies with potentials we're not ready to cope with, with all that means.

This book engages with mystery in a way that I appreciate. Sure, Thorn is a baby and we see him growing up, so he sort of acts like the cliché amnesiac. But instead of having a character explain everything to Thorn⁠—really explaining everything to the reader⁠—Cherryh lets the reader ride along as Thorn figures things out from hints and clues dropped by Dunn and by Thorn’s own experiences. This method of exposition mixes showing and telling in a way that works much better than Jason Bourne’s amnesia.

Developing her characters, Cherryh takes the same approach. She both shows and tells the reader about Thorn and Dunn, while Thorn, the focus of the novel and this period of Dunn’s life, is allowed interior monologue throughout the book. Because he is such a curious, intelligent character, her tightly-focused third person narrative isn’t as important to the story⁠—she is really explaining a lot more in this story than she usually does. But as much as I adore Cherryh’s typical voice, the lessening of it here doesn’t lessen the power of the novel. Rather, she choses to use some telling to explain a complex society of competing guilds, classes, and corporations. And the fact that Thorn is being taught helps the reader understand why so much information is coming at them.

"There are three kinds of people I've found: those who think the universe is good, those who believe it's corrupt, and those who don't want to think about it any more than they can help. I prefer the first two. The last can be hired by anybody."

The themes of this novel explore nature-nurture, authority-hierarchy, destiny-desire, change, and exclusion of potentials. Instead of being anything he wants to be, Thorn is created, cloned, in order to serve a specific purpose for his culture. But how much of him is defined by his duty? This changes throughout the novel as his understanding of his duty and who he serves changes. He grows up serving Dunn, then serving the wider culture of the Hatani guild, then serving the whole culture as ambassador to an alien species. Yet how much of Thorn’s alienness is in the clone, and how much of the Shonunin is there? This is a question Cherryh explores from the start, and she clearly communicates that nurture can superseed nature, but not entirely. As he changes from within, the context also acts upon him to change him from without. He takes one step, and the context moves in to shove him a couple of more steps. This applicable theme shines throughout the novel.

"Change is your world. Flux and shift."

The science fiction theme here shows a first-contact situation, one that has gone wrong. Humans discovered this star system, but their scout ship was destroyed by the natives, who managed to clone a member of their expedition as an ambassador to attempt to rectify their earlier reckless aggressiveness. It’s interesting to read a first-contact gone wrong story, and something I relate to in my professional and personal lives. Cherryh’s voice often leaves much to the reader’s mind to puzzle out, and that’s one of the reasons that I read her books. Cherryh here manages to show the cascading effects of a bad first impression, partly through what’s shown and told in the novel, but also through the reader’s mind working on hints she drops about the even wider context of these Shonunin in their place in the galaxy.

We know a lot more now-what the cost of a ship like that is when you have to develop each part and joint as a new technology; the social cost of changes. It's made us rich. It's made us capable of blowing ourselves to hell.

Why the sudden shift to civil war once Thorn is shown some human porn? Well, I don’t think it’s the porn or any others of the tapes he was shown. But rather, I think the realization that he has started to understand led Dunn to the conclusion that the time for explanation has come⁠—and the moves of their enemies certainly helped push the timeline forwards. This I understand, taking a step and not realizing the full effects of it and being surprised by some of the consequences.

I hope that I’ve said enough to show the deep humanity of this alien first-contact tale, where only one character is a human, and even that mostly physically. Thorn is the experiment, the scientific oddity, the alien, but the story is told from his perspective. His human nature is sketchy at best, being raised as a Shonunin. Yet by flipping even this cliché on its head, Cherryh communicates more about humanity than the tired old cliché of a captured alien typically does. The pacing might be a little slow in Thorn’s upbringing, but I never tired or grew bored reading, so I hesitate to mention this most minor of niggles. Really, this is a great novel, and I hope she writes a sequel at some point.